A night with just a few clouds - quite a rare sight in Hobart - and I am finally starting to get positive results. Even with so many tutorials available on Youtube, there will be still little bits of knowledge missing which are absolutely essential for beginners.
I was going crazy about my guiding not working - I was selecting a star for guiding and just seconds into calibration the mount will move by a large amount and the star would be lost. I couldn't figure what was wrong and I was trying lots of different things without seeing any improvement ... until I I dropped the slewing speed from maximum to something like 8x and I was finally able to do a proper calibration.
Now it makes sense but 1 day ago I was still in the dark. Anyway, I will get better in time
One of the targets I tried last night which gave pretty good results was the Lagoon Nebula. I have only taken maybe 3 or 4 exposures starting from 60s up to 5 mins. No darks, no flats, no bias, no stacking - just a single image lightly processed in Photoshop.
For now, I am happy I am able to take 5 min exposures
next will come getting to know my camera better and dialling in the settings, taking enough light frames, darks, flats ... and stacking.
All in good time