Hi all.
Last week when it was quite windy, I got out the 300mm f2.8 L series Canon lens from Bert to try the EOS Ra with. No filters used, under quite light polluted skies, can only just see the milky way overhead!
18 x 5 mins ISO 800, hand guided with a 80mm guidescope alongside. The Sampson mount, made to carry a 10 inch had no trouble here in the wind with such a light load on it. I had the Hepworth Freezer suit on while guiding so I wasnt cold
Biggest challenge was dealing with gradients. Easy to remove in a "quiet" field of just scattered stars and background of empty space, but in this area theres not much empty space.
Happy to have been able to pull this amount of detail from a light polluted sky. Repeating this session under a dark sky would be interesting!
Full size version here
https://www.astrobin.com/bs74ve/