Do your 300 or 180 sec subs look like this ?

[tingting44]

the single sub looks very nice! hopefully some nice dust will show up once stacked, can not wait to see the finished version, this is one object on my ever growing list to image  

[dph1nm]

Thanks Nigel.

Yes the real RAW files will be almost black with the histogram pushed hard up to the left.

I suppose it would be hard to compare all black files so only showing these as a comparison to the OP.

Hopefully not to much confusion on that score.

I think I am just saying that folks shouldn't get too hung up about their images being bright orange or 'washed out' or whatever, because in RAW space they are almost certainly not, and that apparently very bright sky probably doesn't really have many counts in it!

NigelM