I think what saved you on the noise issue was the fact that you got quite a few subs, and even more darks... Proper calibration/reduction via darks/bias/flats is the key to great images.. Something that I unfortunately took a very long time to learn... I never used calibration frames for so long, and now I always wonder how much better the images could have been with use of good data reduction..
I look forward to seeing you add some more data to this shot!
should be a ripper!