Here we have a nice subject for the full moon...  I've been traveling for work the last month so no chance to do any imaging until this weekend.  Of course, getting that time availability coincided with full moon days.  

Despite the unfavorable point in the Lunar cycle, I really wanted to get out and do something and this seemed to be a fairly good choice.  M71 is a loosely packed globular cluster, Shapely-Sawyer Concentration Class X or XI which are described as "loose or very loose towards the center".  This cluster lies at about 13,000 light years away in Sagitta and apparently lies close to the plane of the Milky Way as the starfield is very dense.  The metallicity of the stars in the cluster is higher than many other globs which suggests that it is perhaps a little bit younger than most at about 9 or 10 billion years.  The cluster itself contains about 20,000 stars within a 13 light year radius.  (credit Messier-Objects.com)

My thoughts on how I wanted to present this sort of centered around the idea that I wanted to make it as natural as I could which meant that I did not want to de-emphasize the stars in the surrounding field.  There are simply a ton of stars in this area of the sky and I wanted to let them sing a little bit.  I think I could have increased the saturation a tad but I an trying to adhere to a maxim put forth by @Niall MacNeill in which he told me that "when you think you have it right, you've gone too far".  I try to apply this to a few different aspects of processing and I believe this bit of advice is pure gold...

Imaging rather close to the full or nearly full moon presented some challenges and there were certainly some gradients to deal with. 

This is the second image I've completed with the new mount which is simply superb.  With a 50-point model, the guiding is unbelievable and go-to performance is literally spot on.  I will soon append the model and get it to about 100 points but the thing is truly amazing.

Anyway, hope you like this one, clear skies and good health and of course, comments and criticism always welcome.