M42...Again

Clear skies on Friday night made for a great opportunity to try out the new f/6.3 focal reducer. Again setting my sights on M42, I took 27 30-second sub-exposures at ISO 800. I stacked the images in DSS, and processed in Photoshop. Here's the result (click on image for larger version):

I think the reducer made quite a bit of difference. There's definitely a lot more faint detail in this image, and overall it's significantly less grainy. So far all of my shots have been done with in-camera noise reduction turned off, and I haven't been using dark frames. I think next time I will try turning noise reduction on and see well that works. Supposedly when shooting 30-second exposures and NR is on, the camera will automatically take and subtract a dark frame with each image.