Hi All
Thanks to everyone who has commented with advice and the kind words (kind words unexpected!).
Mark - Thanks for your advice and I love how natural you made the image look with such a simple technique. It certainly made it obvious how important this step (i.e. GIMP or Photoshop) is in post processing and I will definitely putting into my processing regime from now on.
Peter - Thanks for the tip on using Autostakkert, I will download it and have a look. I like the advice on aligning histogram during capture and I could see how this would assist in reducing post processing time etc. I will definitely look at doing longer imaging sequences for the next lot. Not sure what you mean by deconvolution work though?
John - I did try to increase the image scale but it made the image really horrible and blurry/grainy/block like. Any further tips on this without reducing the image quality too much?
But thanks to you all (Laurie, Mark, Rowland, Peter & John) for the encouragement you have given me!
I think I know where I went wrong and why I was so critical (de-valuing) my images. I was trying to compare apples with oranges!!
Alot of the images that I looked at on the IIS website which make mine pale in comparison have been done with much larger apetures or better optics (i.e. 127mm APO's or 12" SCT's etc).
But you know what this means. I need to get a bigger telescope!!!!
Can't wait to get out there again, just need the time!
Thanks again
Gavin