[Dennis]

John - you have a mild case of dust bunnies. These are tiny specs of dust on the optical glass that protects the ccd/cmos chip in your imager.

No matter how hard you try, they get in. Your case is very mild indeed and can easily be compensated for by taking a flat field and subtracting the flat field from the light frame (image).

Often, people make it worse by trying to clean the surface, as once you open the glass surface to the atmosphere, dust is attracted like a magnet (electro-static charge effect).

The extreme magnification of the x5 PowerMate makes the out-of-focus specs appear as diffuse blobs. If it makes you feel any better, here is the Flat Field used in the Antennae image I posted earlier. It does need a clean!

Cheers

Dennis