Best way to stack/align Ha images for addition to RGB?

[Flea77]

OK, so now I can take Ha images with my camera, then what is the best way to handle them?

If I stack them in DSS just as they are it comes out horrible, mainly blue speckled and totally unusable. Should I convert them to B&W before stacking or is there a specific stacking method in DSS for just such things? I will assume I will not only have to do this with my Ha data but if I start shooting with O-III I will have to do the same.

Now once I get them stacked, my next issue is aligning them. Since I am adding a filter inside my image train that requires me to refocus, and that requires me to move off target and then back on. For some odd reason I can not just place the Ha image over the RGB image and be done, not only does it seem to be slightly off center (which is easy to fix) and slightly rotated (again, easy to fix), but it also seems to be slightly skewed (not so easy to fix).

To clarify.... When I say it is slightly skewed here is what I mean. If you take a central star and get that lined up between images, and then rotate the Ha layer to make the stars in the upper right line up as well as the central star, the lower left still is not aligned. Then if you rotate to align the lower left, the upper right is no longer aligned.

Any help apprecaited.

Allan

PS. I thought the skew problem might be my field flattener but then thought that if the flattener was the issue, then the regular red channel would not line up either, but it does.