When I saw it in the evening it was sitting where that pic shows. And it was a tiny faint dot.
I don't know what that pic was taken thru.
If it was really close to Sirius, it sounds like it could be it. The bright rays of Sirius shouldn't show up as a dot- they are long bright lines. They are called diffraction spikes caused by the spider veins from the secondary mirror.
Excellent going nabbing the Eight Burst neb. It could be poor sky conditions that you didn't get a pleasing view- that happened to me a number of times when I first tried observing it; I thought what's the big deal, I can hardly make it out. And then
it fast became one of my fav planetary nebs. Please do keep having a go at this. And ah, yes, I did forget to mention (so forgot about that!) that with lower power it looks very stellar! If you have a nice clear night, I've even seen the orange hue surrounding it. You don't need an excellent night of good seeing to see this neb, just a good night. And I'm guessing you weren't observing in moonlight.
Still.... you can tick this one off your obs list
.
When I observe objects to the south, for this time of year I use the two globular clusters, Omega Centauri and 47 Tuc to gauge the sky conditions. If you're in a darkish sky, find a star that's just within your limiting magnitude for naked eye visibility.
Looking south, I'm not looking over the city lights from my suburban backyard and these are *just* naked eye to me. When the transparency is poor, they are hard to make out with 47 Tuc non existent. So if I don't see at least Omega, I forget observing. If I see 47 Tuc clearly, I get all excited for a good night's observing.