stock2 or as I like to call it the blair witch cluster

Trevor, nice shots, you'll find that you will learn fast! As for polar alignment, the best thing you can do is get a very good map of the north polar point, I use it from Sky atlas 2000. Try and get your scope as well aligned as possible, as this point is about just less than 1 degree from polaris.

As for light pollution, do you have photoshop???

Keith..

Hi Trev,
Great images there, as for light pollution, if you have photoshop, you can play around with the individual colour levels.

Trevor those are some nice starts. Now why stop at 1 or two exposures, try taking 20-30 and you'll see a real improvement. You can't really remove light pollution without having a good signal/noise ratio and you will only acheive this with lots of exposures.

That said the best method I've found of removing light pollution is using a 'digital development' filter in software. In fact it is the only thing I have found that does the job adequately.

Cheers Lads

Thanks for the suggestions. looking forward to next clear dark night.

What you have begun here Trevor is what I aim to start in the coming weeks also (similar set up to yours etc). Nice going on the purchase, hope to see some great freelance images from you in the future!