Pier 3 Stars

Hey Daniel

Those actually look like pretty normal Newtonian stars, but a bit overstretched.  Have you tried masked stretching or starless processing, to which you add the stars after?

I have tried masked, GHS, and separating the stars out. I guess in retirement I will need a refractor for stars and newtonian for everything else. The spikes of the newt don't bother me it is how square the bigger brighter stars become.

Daniel

Hi Daniel. 

This is a trait of fast Newtonians. There are several things you can do to reduce the effects of the square star syndrome.

Using a special type of curve when stretching is one keeping the mid to highlights part of the curve flat. The other is separate the stars and process them separately which is becoming a bit of a trend with the development of star removal tools like Straton, Starnet++ and StarXterminator.

Unfortunately fast reflectors all suffer with it - comes across as a flaw, which it is not. Its just a characteristic

Cheers 
Peter