If you keep your RGB subs shorter, and just increase the length of you Lum subs you should retain star colour... or if you really wanted to increase the length of the colour subs to up the SNR, you could then also shoot a series of shorter RGB subs and layer the stars in during processing to retain colour... Everyone needs to worry less about over saturating stars and losing colour.. Its a digital image that we spend hours processing anyway... just fix the loss of colour in the processing, get out and capture the longest subs you can!
When you blow out the core on M42, do you lower your exposure time to avoid the saturation? or do you employ different processing techniques to counteract the saturation with shorter exposures and some photoshop work? Why would stars be any different?
Judging by the guiding on this shot I dare say you could double your exposure time and still have awesome results...
Robin - I blame the clouds on you !! "Mr. I've-got-enough-ccd's-to-sink-a-ship"
