http://www.pbase.com/rigel003/image/136843699/original
Here's a repro with a little work in Shadow/Highlights and some mild background smoothing. A considerable increase in contrast and the bright area has much more tonal variety now. Thanks for the advice, Marc and others.
Stars shapes are still not great. Greg, I did use a flattener and as far as I could see on the original subs, the corners had pretty tight stars. Maybe it's a registration issue.