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Hi Carlton,
Great first effort. I think you're about to find out how hard but how rewarding this amazing hobby is. It's so exciting when you start getting images ! Make sure you keep them and you'll be amazed in 6 months tine when you look back at where you started and how far you've come.
Re: bloated stars. I got the same thing when I stated imaging though an SCT. I think because of the focal length, the stars become bigger and really wash out into the surrounding pixels. Your high ISO doesn't help. You're right about flying blind but as I've found, it's the nature of the beast. I very rarely can " see " what I'm imaging. A tip for that is to find the object visually ( often this is just lining up using star patterns you can see ) and set the object as a user/custom object in your hand controller. The slew to a bright star, fit the camera and focus it then return to your user object to take photos.
At that focal length, you'll only be able to take short exposures without a wedge because of feild rotation. This will also contribute to star bloating. This us also going to keep you ISO high. Globular clusters are good targets for short exposures. Trust me when I say that short exposures and high ISOs are not the end of the world though. You can still image, it's just A LOT harder. You'll need to collect at least 4 times the data and about 4 times the data again to reduce noise BUT IT IS POSSIBLE.
My suggestion to you would be to build your self a wedge. At least then you can polar align and that will deal with feild rotation. I'm not familiar with your specific mount but on my Nexstar At-az on a wedge, I could get 22sec subs reliably once polar aligned.
Keep at it Carlton and feel free to ask as many questions as you like. It's what we're all here for, to learn and help each other.
Ryan
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