2600mc gain / offset ?

Imd

I have recently bought a 2600mc and last right was the first clear night.
I have set gain to 100 and offset to 50. Im using an F5 80 mm refractor with an Antilla rgb triband filter . 5min exposures don't seem to be enough to see rebulosity so I tried 10 mins
Is it worth increasing the gain to reduce exposure time ?
images are single unstacked and uncalibrated

raawe

Short answer, no. There's only two possible gain settings in my book. Zero and unity. Zero for broadband targets that are bright and you need more dynamic range or unity for narrowband/regular targets (lower read noise ). For your case I would just add more 5min subs at unity gain.

Btw, your subs look fine. Stacking and processing will reveal the details. You can go to astrobin and search heart nebula images taken with similar gear to see exposure times others took. My quick search https://astrob.in/yw82v6/C/

enaiman

Increasing the gain won't give you better signal, just makes the image brighter while reducing further the Full Well capacity and Dynamic Range. 100 is as good as it can be, if you need more signal, use longer exposures.

Imd

Thank you both for your advice which I will follow.

Ian