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Many thanks for that, Richard!

Most interesting - all sorts of things I've never tried there, off to experiment right now.

Not sure quite how well this will work with a large target like M31, but there's a technique for separating the stars and background, working on them separately and then recombining, here:

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=244

Look forward to it, Richard!

I found your other video very interesting too, never touched the Airy disk radius before so am off to experiment...

Al

Richard Thanks for that posting. I think making use of Jim's excellent data might help me improve my processing skills. I have to say however, that I can't get anywhere near as good as your flickr image. Would it be possible to see your log file? I am clearly missing several tricks at the moment... Al

I use a Bahtinov mask, but if you don't see the cross when you put the mask in place, something's not right. The mask does have to be made for your specific imaging equipment (focal length, objective diameter) to work correctly. Alternatively there are aids in capture software (APT is free to downlo...

I have had a little play with your data, and to speed the processing, cropped the frame quite heavily to get rid of the vignetting (flats will help with this when you are able to take them). Attached image is what I got after a very quick 'n dirty run through Startools and if that's your first go, w...

In addition to following Ivo's expert advice, you are not quite on target. Image below (from Astrometry.net) shows NGC 7380 is just out of frame on the right. If you can get it centred you may find that the Wizard can be picked out?

Not sure if this directly answers your issue, but I don't find the Auto/stars function works very well on my images. So instead, I do this: Select Auto but change Selection Mode to Highlights>Threshold (two clicks on the rh arrow button) set the threshold to say, 60% then click on the do button. If ...

I think that looks quite nice (not that I'm any sort of expert, or anything) there's some nice detail in M82. I do notice a little bit of 'walking noise' which you might be able to reduce if you dither between frames. The yellow streaks running Northeast/Southwest: walking noise.jpg There are also a...

Not quite sure when I first noticed this, but the bin module seems to be altering the colour of the image quite substantialy. My work flow for the images below was Dev, rotate, crop and then on applying the Bin module (50%) I was surprised to see the background colour change from the pale in the fir...