looks like a great start, and I can't see any obvious blooming there either. is it simply dithering that has brought the blooming under control (together with a sigma reject / median stack) or are you using some other tricky method
Very good shot Lewis. The stars look to be oversharpened. That is problem when you use sharpening applied to the whole image. Its best to use a layered approach to sharpening where you control a mask and make it selective. Or a star mask to prevent the stars from being sharpened as they damage easily.
If you are not sure how to do that and have Photoshop PM me and I can walk you through it.
looks like a great start, and I can't see any obvious blooming there either. is it simply dithering that has brought the blooming under control (together with a sigma reject / median stack) or are you using some other tricky method
Another tricky method - CCDStack and MaxIM handle blooming pretty blooming well.
Dithering didn't do too much to the bloom actually (though great for noise reduction)
Thats very nice now. Its an excellent image. Sure, more data is always good but at the size image I am not sure what you are seeing that requires lot more data. Is it noisy zoomed in?
I often shoot Ha 2x2 because usually its just adding some red areas to a colour image and 2x2 Ha is often much cleaner and the stars are already smallish in Ha. Getting the signal up quickly in limited imaging time is the game.
I think it is better too with your new photo. Perhaps you can try longer sub to increase S/N? I see other folks often use 20min or even more with Ha. I too will try to shoot 2x2 Ha as Greg has suggested.
I love shooting 2x2, as the results look fantastic when downloaded in preview, but I find them a little more problematic when it comes to tidy up. Besides, binned x2, the SBIG ST-8XE images are SMALL at 756 px.
