My first attempt, well sort of, is 47 Tucanae. Taken last October, but I've only just got around to doing anything with it - I'm still mostly a visual astronomer.
I've experimented in fits and spurts with stacking and post-processing but found that I had slightly more detail in a single frame with a simple gamma adjustment than with the stacked output. I will probably play around a little more with stacking/processing to see if it gets any better.
Compared to others' efforts, it's a little like a finger painting held up to a Da Vinci - as it doesn't seem to be finely resolved - but then we all have to start somewhere, I suppose.
It's a single 60s exposure, ISO400, from a Canon 600d through an ED80 at f/6.3. Centre cropped to 1024x768. A simple gamma tweak is the only processing.
I re-stacked a few times whilst playing with parameters, and still think the single sub is better - a more natural look. Whilst stacking in DSS reduces noise and darkens the background, it also causes the brighter stars (and therefore the centre of 47 Tuc) to bloom significantly. Further processing experiments in Gimp achieved improvement in colour and overall contrast, but always at a slight cost in detail and usually re-introducing noise to the background.
I think 60s at ISO400 is a bit overexposed with my optical setup, and that may be at the heart of the problem.
