neve really imaged a galaxy before but had some success saturday night. still need way more help processing and learning the skills but heres the best i can do so far.
6 x 5 min RGB
5 x 5 min darks
Nikon d3200
Skywatcher Ed80
Neq6pro
guided with Orion Awesome Autoguider.
stacked in DSS and processed in Photoshop. (still learning)
Ben,
Really nice image, you should be proud of getting the data. At this stage that's the important part, nothing will substitute collecting a lot of good data. You can edit and learn the software side as you go.
thanks.. must say im chuffed im now trolling youtube for pixinsight and photoshop tutorials to play on.. my poor old desktop has about 200 iterations of the same pictures im playing with.. ive got one now where the galaxy kind of blings but the rest of the shot is garbage..
Hopefully this weekend brings clear skies and i can go and get tons of data to play with during the week
Raymo -- do you think i should try 1600 iso and same exposure time.. or shorter? when i get home from work ill post a pic of the raw original photo for you to look at .
Try subs at 1600, and see how long you can go before light pollution washes them out. With the little ED80 you might still get 5 mins. Even
if you only get, say, 3 mins, that's still more data than 5 mins at 800.
I would suggest at least 10 subs, to keep any noise under control.
raymo
Congrats, its a good start Ben. Did you clip the blacks when processing? Maybe up the iso and go a bit less on the levels when adjusting the black point, you should see some improvement.
im now trolling youtube for pixinsight and photoshop tutorials to play on.. my poor old desktop has about 200 iterations of the same pictures im playing with.. ive got one now where the galaxy kind of blings but the rest of the shot is garbage.. 
