That's better....more natural look. But I like the xmassy feeling of the first shot
It's a far "prettier" piccie
You know, even though your scope is an achromatic, the amount of fringe doesn't detract from the piccie. Have you thought of grabbing a baader fringe killer filter?
One thing I'd like to query from the Sky Catalog notes. B8, at 700Ma... I don't think so!!. Nominally, a B8V star would be around 3.3 - 3.5M solar. Even at the lower end, that would mean a main sequence lifetime of only 505 million years. Unless it's a B8III-II, but then that would make it about B6-7 when it was on the Main Sequence...even worse. A more likely spectral class would be A0-A2 given that 700Ma would mean a mass around 2.8M solar, if on the MS. A good example of a similar star would be Regulus.