Taming the Lion

Well improving anyway. Thanks to a lot of help from those kind gents on Astro Chat, I've managed to make some headway in the Leo processing. It turns out that there's a little option in Deep Sky Stacker that I'd missed that automatically cleans up the hot pixels for me. I then found that the reason for the cloud effect was indeed clouds, but due to the stack being based on the stars they had smeared which created a weird swirliness (new word).

Anyway, after the umpteenth iteration of the stacking process, then playing in elements and using levels, curves, Noel's tools, and burn and probably a few other things I've forgotten I ended up with this


Much better than all my other attempts.

My powerpack has now arrived and is on charge. I do however, need the cable, which has been ordered from FLO along with the Baader Microstage II camera attachment. This should mean the mount will stay powered for a lot longer and I can actually attach the camera to the eyepiece properly for afocal imaging.