M44 Beehive and a red smudge

Redcat71 WIFD

SV705C

EQ6-r

lights: 106x15s, gain: 10

darks: 20

processing: siril/GIMP

Bortle 4, Moon at 85% on 28.2.2026

So I am working on my messier catalogue and go for M44, nothing special.

First proper night with my new Redcat (Christmas gift to me, by me), wohoo!

Since I don't expect to do much stretching I don't even bother with flats, only darks.

During some basic stretching a redish smudge appeared at the edge of my image, barely visible.

What is it? An arfitact? I ask myself.

I stretch a bit more until aggressive dust bunnies appear, fortunately no bunnies near the smudge so star extraction + GIMP and I put a mask around it, stretch some more.

Stellarium shows the galaxy NGC2647 at that position, image search doesn't provide lot's of images and they show a different shape than what I can make out.

Plate solver/annotate: hmm, NGC2647 marked just at the edge of my smudge.

So considering my gain/exposure I highly doubt this is actually NGC2647, but for the low effort I put into this I am actually quite pleased how it turned out.

Does anyone have any idea what my smudge might be? A light leak perhaps?