[Lee]

This weekend we camped out at Caffreys Flat (actually only 10km or so from Bretti). I packed in the ED80 and a few finder charts printed by Starry Night, with the objective of showing the kids the planets and moon, and then NGC253 a bit later on.
Struggling with the telrad I was eventually happy I was on Diphda, and started star hopping (gee I'm rusty!) - before long that spooky smudge appeared.... I remember the view of Sculpture with my 8" dob under dark skies from years back, and the ED80 was way behind, but it was still obvious and even impressed my 8 year old son.
Maybe the answer to my imaging stresses is to just take a step back and start star hopping again? I just need a dose of aperture fever I think!