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Hello Andrew,
I use a GStar on an LX90-8" in Alt-az config. The mount does not have all that great tracking ability. So the GStar gets put in the shortest accumulation time I can manage.
That means - if you can see a dim fuzzy in real time at 128x, then try at 96x ... etc.
The downside of this is that the video stream is only an 8-bit signal, which means you need to keep up the accumulation time or the image starts to posterise if it's dim. In layman's terms, you don't have enough of a difference between brighter dim things and dimmer dim things, so they end up looking the same, and when you try "stretching" the region in Photoshop to bring out the subtle bits ... they're just not there.
The bleed around stars is another phenomenon, and some imagers take a "starfield" image or series of images, at a much shorter acc rate, and layer that into their final image.
Be aware that I am still learning all this stuff.
You may wish to read Steve Massey and Steve Quirk's excellent book, "Deep Sky Video Astronomy" for a more in-depth treatise on the subject.
Regards,
Tony Barry
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