Imaging session - First milky way images of 2025

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So, we took our motorhome 'Bryony' (it was going to be named 'Brian' after the snail in The Magic Roundabout. But, the motorhome didn't look a 'Brian' - more a 'Bryony! So there's the story. Our old caravan was 'Florence'; our car is 'Zebedee'. You can see a theme here! Sixties child! Sorry I digress!) down to Charmouth for a week. 

A combined trip - fossil hunting for the Boss and trying to catch the first rising of the galactic core in the Milky Way for me. 

Wow. There's some light pollution down at Portland and Weymouth! 

The two images below are the same data - 12 x 20" at ISO 1600 using Canon 800D (astro-modded) and Samyang 14 mm F/2.8 all stacked in Sequator and then processed in Affinity photo. The starless image was processed in SIRIL using Starnet++ but when I put the stars back in - it looked horrendous. No idea why, so I kept it starless which is a tad unrealistic isn't it. 

The bright light out to sea is, I think, the Portland lighthouse

The astro-modded camera certainly picks out the H-alpha

The starless image - broody and moody - I just cannot get SIRIL to reduce the number of stars.

You can see the image below when I did star recomposition. Infuriating and in reality, processing in affinity photo was much easier than in SIRIL and this was using the same image from Sequator! 

This post editing malarkey is hard work. Have I said that before? 😕 Sorry! 😂