[acropolite (Phil)]

Graeme, a good result for a first attempt, it does look a little soft.

I notice in your profile that you have an EQ6, not sure if you used it with this shot, if not you can take longer exposures with the camera mounted on the EQ6 (properly aligned of course).

Don't overlook the processing software that came with your Camera, for many tasks and particularly raw processing, Digital Photo Professional does the job as well as the paid for offerings.

If you didn't already, shoot in RAW, that way you'll get the maximum dynamic range and the best chance of extracting all the information in your images. Get the image looking as good as possible by tweaking the colour balance, saturation, exposure, lens corrections in DPP then export in your desired format for final touches in Gimp.

If you can beg/steal/borrow a faster lens (e.g 50mm f1.8) your results will improve dramatically, a couple of stops more exposure will bring out the colour and reduce the noise.