Living only around 5 kms from the Sydney CBD my opportunities for getting to dark skies are limited. Last new moon I travelled up to the Lake Macquarie region (thanks to the hospitality of IIS member zardoz123).
Having been 6 months or more since I did a drift alignment it was slow going and when I tried to decrease the altitude of the polar axis in the dark I loosened off the clamp too much causing it to drop down to horizontal not once but twice!
All this meant that it was nearly midnight by the time I was ready to take some images & in my haste I forgot to set my DLSR to RAW & made some mistakes with focusing etc.
Anyway despite all that I managed to get some (limited) data as per below. Both objects are my first attempts at them through a telescope (although I've had a go with a zoom lens previously).
Both are stacks of 5 subs at 1600 ISO on a K-5 (with in-camera dark-frame reduction) through the NG ED102 (unguided) on my old Vixen SP mount. I need to get better at setting up so I can take longer exposures at lower ISO to reduce the noise etc.
Thanks for looking - comments welcome of course