You sure you’ve got the alpha on the image itself all the way up? If I do the same thing as you’re doing here, a fully opaque image completely blocks out even the strongest emission. But if I put the image’s alpha at even 1 point away from fully opaque, the emission gets through:
Are you setting the alpha using a script? Any chance you’re doing some kind of loop where alpha < 1, but never fully set the alpha to one the last time through the loop?