[naskies (Dave)]

Question: how bad is the level of light pollution I'm seeing here?

For example, I've attached three comparison photos showing a straight-out-of-camera sub against my stacked/stretched version. Are other people seeing anywhere near this level of background light?

I have a lot of trouble pulling out the details and colours of any non-ridiculously-bright nebulae, e.g. the horse head in the attached sub. I can see the horse head in the full resolution file if I squint and do a bit of stretching... but it's so close to the background colour that I doubt I can actually image it "properly".

For the record, I'm using a plain (unmodded) Canon 5DmkII, William Optics FLT-132 refractor on an NEQ-6 mount, and auto guiding with an Orion Awesome Autoguider package. I can easily see the outline of the Milky Way as it stretches from the Southern Cross past Scorpius/Sagittarius and beyond with the naked eye, and I can usually see the SMC/LMC with averted vision (and occasionally when looking directly at it).

Is it primarily due to my inexperience and/or lack of subs, or do I need darker skies?

Thanks for any input!