NGC 925 REDO

So I guess I was right about the bad data ruining my NGC 925 shot.  Well, "ruining" may be too strong of a verb.   I re-stacked the frames only taking exposures that were 21 degrees and cooler.   As an experiment, I did a stack without BIAS frames and a stack with BIAS frames, but no dark frames.    Both resulted in a cleaner image with noticeably less noise which meant I could push the image further in terms of pulling out small detail in the galaxy's arms.

While I was getting more exposures in my original stack, I was basically ADDING UNNECESSARY NOISE with all those exposures between 22-29 degrees celsius.   I immediately started researching ways to non-invasively cool the Canon T3i.  About a year ago, I bought some aluminum sheet and a cooler to make one of Gary Honis's DSLR coolers.  But I wonder if I would get the same result by simply attaching the peltier/heatsink/fan combo to the back of the camera using the tripod socket?   Hm...   I'm going to have to figure something out since every time it dips above 45 degrees F my camera has heat stroke.

Anyways, here's the processed shot of NGC 925 using better data:

So get this...  this is 61 x 600 sec light frames, NO DARK FRAMES, 20 flat frames, and 44 bias frames!!!   Brought into Lightroom and Photoshop.  This is about a 70% crop of the original image.

This image is ever-so slightly less noisy than the version with dark frames and no bias frames.

Weird.

Anyways, here's an even tighter crop:

It's cool to pick out all the little galaxies in the background.  I can make out about 25 in this close-up crop.