maxthebuilder wrote: OK guys - thanks for helping! The main thing I got out from all this - it's hard to get good results @ Bortle 8 site. Interestingly enough, yesterday, I got a decent picture of the Owl nebula with just 45 x 60 sec (it's high up in the sky - maybe less pollution reaches there). Leo Triplet was OK too two weeks ago. Just Markarian's Chain was awful (shot next day after the Triplet).
I'll play with gain, offset, exposure time to get better results.
Thanks![/quote

Higher is always better - Bortle 8 is NEVER GOOD. I'm in Bortle 6 and it's hard... I have learned I must use mono and NB filters. As I said before I never can get longer than 60 second exposures with out the background sky washing out the target.
For this reason and finding out that my ASI094 doesn't work if there is any moon at all at home. I built that camera into a light small portable setup that I can bring to my daughters house about 20 min N of me. They have Bortle 3 and I can see the milky way every night there.
While at home Best I can see is the dipper. Best bet - shorter exposures and try DSS live . It will debayer, stretch and stack your images live as each shot it taken. I use it with Ekos because the Kstars/ekos suite has a LOUSY FIT VIEWER.
You will also have the best luck with brighter targets. M42, M33, M101... M42 etc.

This is M42 with my OSC camera (which often does poorly at home) however M42 is bright...
Dates:Jan. 4, 2019

Frames: 8 X MIX of 8 second to 120 second exposures. So like 8 - 20 - 30 - 60 - 120

Avg. Moon age: 28.10 days

Avg. Moon phase: 2.31%

DDS live - then photoshop enhanced.

F8 APO, L-pro filter