Cheers Richard - yes there's a few little 'tuning forks' you can use. Through the eyepiece I often attempt to spot some of the smaller rilles such as the rille in Vallis Alpes (if the illumination is right) and if i can make that out I know it's a very good night. Copernicus, and Gassendi is another benchmark for me when it comes to imaging.
Leo - thanks for that tip re. the mozzies - i will give that a try next time. I use the onboard hdd on my MacBook for the captures using ASICAP which i have found to provide the best speeds of the available software that I have used. I have about 200gb free so usually allows for a several captures. If space is tight, I use a
fast USB thumb drive, which I have found to deliver excellent transfer speeds and I can even capture direct to the drive with minimal dropped frames. I also do my processing off that USB as I need to transfer the files to my wifes work PC laptop as none of the programs operate on mac. It takes about 3-5min to transfer about 50gb of data and less than 30min to analyse & process it all in AS!4. My old surface pro3 that I used to use would take upwards of 12hrs to process one image!!