Hi Robert,
Haha yeah, definitely some weird processing artefacts sneaking in there when it's that red
. Initially mine came up as a heavy green on the Canon at the telescope until I ran the Hasta LaVista green processing tool on it. I thought something was wrong at first - then I learnt that green is pretty common at the camera. Not many green DSO's in real life though apparently
RE: SCP - My latitude is about 31 degrees, and with the LX200 in equatorial mode, the telescope has to be rotated fully through the fork arms to point at the SCP (i.e. polar home position). Unfortunately when this occurs the eyepiece/camera etc. is pointing downward, directly at the wedge/mount. When I offset by a few degrees to point at the Tarantula, it's still gets reasonably close to the base. It's ok without the focal reducer though, and in alt-az mode imaging near the SCP is a breeze.
Mike Weasner has a sample image
here of his LX200 in polar home position (approx 2/3 of the way down the page). His image can probably explain it way better than I can. As they say - a picture is worth a thousand words!
Cheers, Evan