Hi Rob,
Thanks for giving the processing a go, I have successfully "removed" the dust with heal in Startools, but then have difficulty cleanly removing the vignetting without introducing gradients.....
I hear what you are saying about dark skies and CCDs. Trouble is, I am time poor like you said and dont really feel like spending an hour or more each way packing all things into the car (chair, table, scope kit, scope, tripod, PC, cables, power tank etc etc) and then unpack and reverse it all to find that when I get there, its windy/cloudy/crap seeing/ and so on. OR I have left a bit of kit behind and cant take photos.....grrrrr
So, its the backyard for me for a while, I have been able to master drift aligning with PHD (thanks Trevor Gerdes) and now with my lower profile 2" adaptor, the DSLR is quite coma free, so I have been making progress of sorts since the monsoons stopped.
I was toying with spending $1.5K on extending the decking out the back next to the pool, putting a tilt/slide off roof shed obs there with the scope on a pier and therefore maximise sky time rather than the hour it takes me now to set everything up. This then turned into redirecting those funds into a new CCD, so with Peter's generous loan of his QHY8, I had a chance to try it out side by side with the DSLR.
Then the same processing hurdles came up with either camera, so I have now decided to stick with small steps, such as the light box (and check the primary as well) to fix the vignetting, a LP filter to help the DSLR during glowy nights and also build a copper peltier box to reduce some of the thermal noise so prevalent in the 1000D.
This will be a LOT cheaper and allow me to grab some of the brighter galaxies and nebulae so once the limits from the burbs are reached, I can still venture off to dark skies and/or buy a cooled CCD when the funds are more plentiful. In the meantime, I am in processing school until I can learn the tools inside and out.
I have reset my expectations to a lower level and regained some perspective from some sage advice here and via PM from you very patient lot, so thanks to all who have helped me plan for what the next step should be for me...
I am (and probably always have been) a computer nerd, which is why I have been frustrated with my incompetence in driving processing programs to get some results out of what I recognise now is essentially cruddy data. But, its all a learning experience!
Cheers
Chris