mverta said:

There's something more to it; I've never seen another shot quite like it, because the ratio between the starfield and the explosion is utterly different on those laserdiscs than on any film source I've seen. Even if you crushed down the luminance on the explosion - which still wouldn't yield anything close to what we see on the LDs - the starfield would be utterly wiped out, and we know that these LD's don't have spot exposure areas. So, ultimately, we know that on the negative, all that is in there, but it never made it to a theatrical print, and only the LDs have it - even the 2006 OT DVD doesn't have it, though it does have a yellow coloring. It's truly unusual on many fronts.

Yeah, I don't know what the hell is going on in those LD's, but it's not natural. I noticed that in the Special Collection LD, often when there's an explosion, the luminance drops. At one point in the Death Star trench when Vaders wingman hit the wall, it basically looks like someone turned off the light switch.