[ZeroID (Brent)]

Cheers Bill, Malcolm for the encouragement.

I'll download DSS and see how that works, thanks for the pointer. I'm a long time photographer with plenty of Adobe/Gimp/PaintShop Pro software available and enough experience with it to play colour balance.
I'd already figured I needed longer exposures and I think I can get 30 secs + with accurate tracking. Also need some shorter to get detail I think. If I could just make the clouds go away ...

I'd love to go with a serious mount but it's way outside my budget. The wooden legs on the tripod are an 'upgrade' from an older tripod and were much more stable than the original aluminium set. And I have now added a very heavy weight (a small anvil !) slung beneath through the centre point to increase stabilty and reduce vibration and settling time.

But I do have another ATM idea in mind with a short heavy length of concrete sewer pipe ( unused !) and a large concrete slab already in my backyard. Think of the Sewer Pier concept. And piles of hardware junk and tools in the garage.

Better go get DSS now.

Thanks again.