At last I've managed to:
a) get the time
b) avoid the clouds and rain
c) had skies good enough to bother with
d) get proper polar alignment on my little Tak SkyPatrol-II
I used StarTarg and a webcam to drift align, and managed to take single images with the clock drive keeping stars round for up to
8 minutes. Not bad. No guiding. RA motor only. This mount has been hard to align mainly because the 355mm focal length of the FS60-C scope makes it a long-winded task if you use a 12mm illum. reticle. Painful. Webcamming it made all the difference
Anyway - here are my first attempts with it and the even littler FS60-C. The camera is a Nikon D40 that desperately needs to have the IR filter ripped out - happening soon. Typically these are 4 minute single-frame images with a dark subtracted. ISO800-1600.
Now that I have the polar alignment kinda sorted with this mount, and its really short focal length, (355mm) I'll take multiple images and stack next time around.
1) Eta Carinae
2) Triffid & Lagoon
3) Omega Centaurus
4) a 490-second exposure (8 minutes) unguided and unprocessed - I just let the RA motor run to see what happened. Pretty yukky - but should process-up OK.