I've only got el cheapo newtonians so far, nothing fancy so I don't think the Orion cam will help unless they unlock the autoexposure or maybe if I get a tracking mount. From reading reviews/feedback it gets a clear mixed reaction, my guess is the negatives are from people like myself without a tracking mount who get a target lined up just out of shot, then capture video as the target moves across the screen...rinse and repeat and stack etc. With the Toucam I can lock off exposure properly whereas the Orion adjusts exposure itself which is useless. I think on a tracking mount the autoexposure keeps the image at a reasonably constant level and you can use the exposure slider to over/under expose to taste.
As for the aberations you're getting I would expect they are a refraction artifact, so the light passing through something clear (like your field flattener? or what about the clear front I see in pics of cassegrains (or is that the dust cover?). I honestly don't know about how mirrors behave, but I wouldn't expect refraction unless the mirror surface is under a clear layer. For example a bathroom mirror has the mirrored surface behind a layer of glass to protect it, telescopes to me should have the mirroring on top for maximum reflection of photons without distortion.
Dust on the mirror I wouldn't expect to cause refraction, but dew certainly could (clear water refracts light, dew drops of any size will do it). Are you shooting through an eyepiece? Does the focuser assembly have a correcting/barlow lens element in it?
The aberations are very noticable in highest contrast areas (bright edge of the moon) you can try to reduce exposure so you are not overexposing the brightest parts. After processing you should be able to bring up the brightness in the shadows without bringing up the aberations.
Something I've done in the past with photography where I'm shooting something static (not moving) with strong aberations is to take a bunch of shots but recompose each shot of the subject. So for example I'd take my camera off tripod and shoot continuous for a few seconds handheld. My slight body movements will mean the subject is in a slightly different position in each frame. The aberations change in different ways across a glass element so by shooting this way I have a bunch of shots of the subject with differing aberation amounts so I can then align and stack them to greatly reduce the effect across the whole shot. If that makes sense
