Hey Rob,
good to see a comparison of the two images on Omega!
Thanks for the thanks....
As you know I wasn't overly happy with trying to processing this image, as we discussed, heavy gradient issues on all your subs.
Even dropping the green channel a fair way down with our ratio...
R :1, G :.94, B: 1.05 or there abouts...... knowing that this chip indeed is very sensitive in the green wave length,(bit like my SXH9) but found the balance getting lost and ending up with red core stars..... no way correct.
The gradient down half of the image stuffed any hope.
But thank goodness for IRIS's background extraction routine to at least get an even background.
Whether the gradient source is in your observatory...... but more likely, and in retrospect (not that I was there on the night.. how many Turkey's Rob???), the light dome of Streaky Bay... is what I'm thinking here Rob, your pretty much exposed to it.
You would have been pointing almost due south.... I think your exposures were in the 300sec sub area ??? any way this would have had the light show up pretty well, creeping into your dome opening.
I've found sometimes even the Milky Way from my Town hidden observatory giving me slight gradients with long exposures....
God damn those bright lights......

town she's a growin'.
So I guess for you with bright objects like this in the due south area, go the shorter sub exposures to keep the effects of the town light dome to a minimum. !! Just do test exposures and see what the trade off is on any object your going to image.
Your present main imaging setup has a monster FOV, with a fair bit of light gathering power... the nice sensitive Kodak chip and the lovely Taka will do the rest with lots of Lum frames for detail.
Any way Rob, congrats, you've made a great step towards getting your colour processing sorted. All trial and error with colour imaging and setup situations...
All great fun to share our trial and tribulations, plus our images,.. of course.

Now take it easy on the Wild Turkey's...

All the best for now
Rich