Hi Guys, and thanks for your comments.
A few questions raised there, so I'll have a go at answering them.
The camera is a Starlight Express SXVF-H9C, Peltier Cooled, one-shot colour camera, which uses the Sony ICX285 CCD.
Dark skies, well, for this light polluted little island (the UK), I guess I'm pretty lucky, as I live in a rural village location.
The village has no street lighting, and the nearest town (Ipswich) is 7 miles to the North. This does give some sky glow in that direction, but for us Northern Hemisphere guys, most everything happens to the South, and even those objects that are in the north at certain times of the year, move on round as the year progresses.
As far as the foucuser goes, although dual-speed crayford on the WO Megrez, was a delight to use, I really never had any issues with the single speed Crayford on the old Skywatcher ED80. Either way, as my scopes are controlled remotely from the observatory warmroom. The old SW ED80, and now the new Meade APO, is fitted with a JMI Motor Focuser.
I have just made up an adapter plate, to enable the JMI unit that was on the SW ED80 to fit the new Meade APO.
A word of caution regarding the Meade APO, is that early batches of these scopes came into the UK, via Meade in the US, and the quality control was either poor, or non-existant. Therefore, there were a few 'bad eggs' in the 'basket', which didn't inspire confidence.
All of these scopes now coming into the UK, do so via Meade Europe in Germany, and they operate to tight quality control system. End result, the quality is now consistently good.
Paul (PCH), I'm going to be in WA, visiting my daughter and family, for 5 weeks, from Oct 3rd to November 8th. I'll be staying down in Warnbro, and will be hiring a car for the duration, so if I can be of any help to you, it would be a pleasure.
I have kindly been invited along the the ASWA meeting, and will most certainly be taking up the offer.
I've attached another picture, taken witth the Meade APO last night. This is the eastern section of the Veil Nebula NGC6960.
Again, less than ideal conditions, with an almost full Moon, washing out the sky, but still a reasonable result.
If its of interest, for those that missed the link in my introductory 'post', there's quite a few my pictures of Northern Hemisphere DSOs, and a few that we share, on my website at:
http://uk.geocities.com/daves.astronomy@btinternet.com/
Dave
P.S> If Admin wish to move my initial 'post' in this 'thread', to the equipment reviews section, they are more than welcome to do so.