Thank you all for the replies, some great advice!
I attended an astro camp this weekend and had the privilege of using an older HEQ6 mount with my Canon 80D and some fancy lenses, hence my post about moving on my 6SE etc.
I managed to get some of the following images (these are unprocessed and the jpeg versions of the raw files, so please be gentle
).
https://astrob.in/399696/0/
https://astrob.in/399697/0/
https://astrob.in/399699/0/
As for learning about our night sky before starting AP, well.. too late! Haha! I've actually learned a tonne since starting already. I'm definitely a "learn as you go" type of person.