Finally got a big-boy camera! QHY8L. This one has a sensor big enough to get all the bigger objects I've been avoiding. I mainly decided to get this camera because it uses a more "mainstream" debayer matrix.

The Orion Starshoot G3 I graduated from has a crazy CMYG debayer matrix which was hard to get working right. Deep Sky Stacker didn't want to recognize it, despite whatever settings I picked. Nebulosity didn't like it too much either once I switched to using Sequence Generator Pro for acquisition. I still have no explanation for this, but Neb just wanted to treat it differently. PixInsight didn't like it either. PI comes with a CMYG debayer script which has a neat little preview so you can arrange the color boxes in the same pattern as your matrix. Try as I might, I could never get it it arranged into the correct matrix for the Starshoot. So I got absolutely sick of it and threw the baby out with the bathwater and ordered this new QHY camera from OPT. This one has a GBRG matrix which is much better recognized by the different software. DSS popped out the correct colors immediately. And though I haven't tried with PI, I saw that it has the GBRG matrix as one of the defaults.

I also bumped up to 20 minutes subs for the object, which was my first time doing this. With only 7 frames on this object, and shot under a half moon, I'm sure it only gets better than this!

Even though I took about 15 flats, I still got strong vignetting on the edges. And with such a big sensor, I can really see the star elongation at the edges, though I managed to crop most of them out. It might be time for a field flattener in my future. If you look along the right vertical, you can see where the stars had a very strong blue cast which was difficult to get straightened out.

I also tried some HDR to soften the core and reveal more details but it didn't help much; looked better just leaving it alone.