mackiedlm

That's excellent, Great colours and detail.

This is a normal result with the L-extreme and is easily removed with any gradient removal tool. This is a comparison of before (left) and after (Right) application of graXpert. Boosted stretch to show the difference better.The remaining red in the background is the dust starting to show through. I dont beleive there is anything wrong with your flats or calibration.

In the ISO setting window. Yes it will function in manual mode. This from the 600D manual There is indication that, despite what the manuals say, Exposure Compensation will also function in manual mode in some specific Canon Models - I've seen specific reference to this in the 6D but dont know how true that is or if any other models also show this characteristic.

Make sure Auto ISO is turned off too.

There is something going on between image capture and saving the image as CR2. Are you sure you disabled any in camera processing. Taking the last image you uploaded from last night IMG_5291.CR2; When I open in Photoshop camera raw, I get this Note the histogram , data in middle. The image is still very bright. A properly exposed astro CR2 will be very dark. If I open that same image in Pixinsight and debayer, This is what I get without any stretch applied; This is exactly what a reasonably well exposed unstretched astro image should look like, Note the histogram way to the left (on a moonless night it would likely be further to the left. If I apply an automatic stretch with STF I get this Again this is exactly what I'd expect from this camera, lens, no filters, a bright moon, 30s @ISO400 - based on what I get with my 700D, The gradient is almost certainly from the moon and other LP and would be easily handled in the stack using any form of gradient removal. In my opinion, there is some processing imbedded in the .CR2 which Photoshop uses to produce what it does. PI does not understand that imbedded information and opens the true "raw" image. You need to work out what is happening in camera and stop it. Or else try stacking the subs in pixinsight. But as long as you shoot with that camera and fast lens un filtered, in full moon conditions, you are going to have live with those terrible gradients and the other issues related to the bright moon LP Also, I'd just note that stopping down has done little to improve the coma/abberations from the lens. They are still very bad. this is a zoom in to the top left corner. HTH

Thanks for sharing your data. This is my go in Pixinsight. The halo's on the brightest stars are are a bit tough, but could probably be minimised with some more work.

I live in the west of Ireland so I think I probably trump you in terms of crappy weather🤣🤣. I've not had even a partly clear sky since Jan 5th. Good luck tonight, for sure the pratice setting up and getting an image is always useful, but dont be too surprised if the outcome is similar. Although no exposure comp and Elps's DIY hood, may help some.

So with a close, almost full moon and exposure compensation, I think thats a large part of your problem and explains why the images are so bright. Turn that off exposure comp, check everything else and, if you have to image tonight, point as far away from the moon as you can (moon is 94% tonight and not far from orion) Imaging broadband tonight and at that speed and that FL is going to be extremely difficult (even futile) and many imagers, myself included, would not try unfiltered broadband in these circumstances.

So several things from your files; How are you saving these subs - if I open them in Photoshop or Pixinsight they look already stretched (see below) - its a bright dusky sky rather than a black image with just some bright stars showing. 30 seconds at iso 800 would not give that type of image, even with bad LP. You need to make sure that you are saving them as totally raw with no processing happening either in camera or after you download them to your PC. From those its easy to see that you had some significant clouds passing through - also some vegetation in the lower part of the earlier image. You could go through them and discard those with clouds but i think you'll find that a lot of them will be unusable. Likewise, the DSS stack is looks stretched - I guess that could be because the subs were already stretched or possibly because you saved the stretched version that DSS throws up (its been a long time since i used DSS so struggling to remember exactly how it works. Its difficult to tell on those images but i do think your focus is soft. Before you do anything tonight you should look at how the raw images are being handled and saved. get that right before worrying about trying longer exposures.

Its very difficult to work out whats going on there. Can you make the un-processed stacked image and a couple of raw subs available in a shared file and we can have a look at it. Perhaps high thin cloud may not be helping but I doubt if thats the main problem. 30 secs and ISO 800 are going to be OK as a starting point with this camera/lens. (from my experience with a 700d which I think uses the same sensor). Looking at whats in your image theres a few obvious issues, chromatic abberation and mishaped stars moving out from centre being the most obvious.. The mishhaped stars will be helped by stopping down (As Ollie pointed out - preferably with step down rings.) It may help the CA a little too but there are other ways of helping that in processing. I also think you have overstretched the image blowing out the bright stars and even some of the less bright ones. Also, when was this taken in relation to the moon - i.e how bright and how close?

That is wonderful. The detail is excellent.

Thats spectacular.

Thats a brilliant FOV. I really hope you can finish it because I think it would be a bit special. Good luck!

Thats a fantastic image - very well done.

Orion is so low for me that even right now, when he's in exactly the right part of the sky, I still cant get more than 6 hours on target. Taken with the drastic lack of clear sky it means that my plans to get some long integration and a mosaic of this area are looking likely to be a multi-year, rather than a multi-night mission. So I'm processing piecemeal as its likely to be at least 3 weeks before I can add to this. I wanted to try to bring out some of the background dust which abounds in this area so it was processed accordingly - so the Orion nebula is a bit brighter than I'd like, despite careful and judicious masking. The core is a little blown because I only took 3 min exposures. I may take some shorter ones to do HDR if I get back on this target this year, Its just under 6 hours with the Samyang 135mm, ASI2600mc, L-Pro filter all sitting on the little StarAdventurer GTI.

I think thats first rate- nice definition and colour - well done

I dont see anything botched with these - I think both are excellent. I like the colour and saturation levels

Thats really nice. I dont see a whole lot of difference between your warma nd cold versions? At 12 hours with a IMX571 you should for sure be able to bring out some IFN. Are you removing the stars and Stretching with GHS - that woul be the first steps I'd try but you'd need to do some masking (GAME script would work well) to really bring it out.

This is a rather late chrismas tree so I'll call it the cone and the foxfur - though at this FL the foxfur looks more like a mouse fur Its about 2.5 hours each with ZWO 7nm SHO for a total of 7.5 hrs with the QHY163m and the Sharpstar 62EDPHii. Processedin Pixinsight. I may have oversharpened it a bit but hey-ho - with the way this season has gone I'm just happy to have an image.

I thinks thats a fantastic image.

Thats fantastic Ivo, not one I've seen before.

This has been a long time coming. It's a mosaic I had planned since I first got my Samyang 135mm a year ago. But the weather this winter has been just awful. I got the first panel in early November then nothing more until last week. It's 3 panels, each panel around 5.5 hours for just under 17 hours total. Samyang 135mm ASi 2600mc Pro, Altair L-pro filter

Super image, You dont ofeten see this target at such a focal length and it really shows off the structures within. Nicely done.

Thats a fantastic image. Love the colour and detail.

I really like this target and think it gets less attention than it deserves. this is a nice rendition.