Strange White Spots in Recent Images

Zak’s Astrophotography

I am not sure what the cause of these strange white spots are in my recent images, but it is really starting to annoy me...

All of my older images are fine, it's just been the most recent ones that have been experiencing this issue. I have to take my images into Photoshop to try and remove them, but it's producing less than optimal results.

I also noticed that BXT seems to "sharpen" them when I use it on my starless images. I am also having to use StarNet2 to remove the stars from my images because on almost all of my images, SXT is removing nebulosity. Sometimes it is not too bad, but other times it is more severe. I am not sure if it is because I am using StarNet2 instead of SXT.

A link is attached to some screenshots showing the issue.

Zak

White Spots

BlockHead

Well... it looks like the star removal is the culprit. Those are either faint stars or incompletely removed stars right?

-the Blockhead

Zak’s Astrophotography

It seems like it only appears whenever I use StarNet2, but even before star removal they are still there at times.

Not sure what is going on. They could well be faint stars. I'll have a closer look at the light frames before stacking. May even debayer one of them to see if it's still there. It seems to be more prevalent in my OIII channel than my Ha channel. Very odd...

Zak

BlockHead

Yes, more analysis... but I am of the mind star removal (or lack thereof).

-the Blockhead

Zak’s Astrophotography

After doing some thorough investigating, I can confirm that it is most likely StarNet2 producing these artifacts. 

Whenever I use StarXTerminator, it doesn't produce these artifacts. In fact, I think it may even remove them. The only trouble is whenever I try and use StarXTerminator on images with fine nebulosity, it removes some (if not all) of it.

I sent Russ some of my images so he can use them to test the new version of SXT he is currently working on. Hopefully the new version comes out eventually.