Photoshop help, please!

Ted, you'll find that the RAW converter in CS2 will do the job - there are noise reduction settings there, but the big thing is to darken the sky to reduce the light pollution, while leaving the stars and nebulae intact - i.e. you need to lower the dark tones and midtones.

In CS2 (after converting and opening the image) you can use the Levels tool to further refine the job, and the Hue/Saturation sliders to reduce the impact of that orange hue by slectively darkening reds (and yellows). Both these tools are in the 'Image' menu under 'Adjustments'.

1. Before adjusting levels.




2. After adjusting levels.




3. Adjusting Hue/Saturation.




This is just a very quick go at the image to show that you have the tools within CS2 to improve the image without resorting to LR3.

Hello Ted

I think David has hit the nail on the head, the banding is certainly sensor noise, while there are plug-ins that do help in post processing there is no substitute for getting a good RAW image at the time.
Even with the latest DSLR sensors astroimagers are always battling with the old noise enemy, the solution to this is thermo-electric cooling of the sensor which is why CCD's (Charge Couple Devices) are used in astroimaging, these are really just specialist DSLR's with cooling, shutter,exposures etc. controlled from your laptop rather than on camera.

Recently the difference between CCD's & DSLR's has become more blurry as DSLR's can now be fitted with theremo-electric coolers too by third parties but unfortunately these modifications are only available with Canon cameras ...not Nikon or Pentax.

With my Pentax K5 I find optimum results around 800iso up to around 5mins.

What I would suggest is switch any noise reduction off, while this helps in properly exposed ambient images it's better to do any noise reduction at the computer. Also while low iso's are good in ambient light it's better to use higher iso's in deep sky imaging, try 400 & shorten the exposure times sligtly ...though 800 may be a little too high on an earlier camera.

Light pollution is becoming a real problem & does lower the overall contrast, try again from a slightly darker spot.

Hope this helps...


Mike

This is a long winded and in-depth explanation, but the following might be helpful if you're going to do these sorts of photos quite often;

http://photo.net/learn/dark_noise/

In short (very short), take a "dark frame", and use Photoshop to blend with "Difference" mode to cancel out noise from your images. The dark frame should match your exposure time, but can be re-used for future photos.
You do NOT need to take one for every photo (that is basically what your camera does when you turn on noise cancellation and is why you want to make sure it is turned off!)

Bear in mind, also, that 30 seconds is quite a long time at a highish magnification. The stars/nebulae will have moved quite a bit over that time so the images are never going to be properly sharp unless you have an astronomical mount which moves with the planet.

The blurring/elongation of the various stars is a result of this, so stacking images, as previously suggested, might be a good bet.