[ZeroID (Brent)]

Hi Doug,
Yeah, we all have issues with imaging, part of the game.

1/ As high as you can go is best ( more detail ) I run at 24 megapixels.
4/ RAW, don't worry about size, that comes later during processing.
2/Stay out of the wind !! ( use shields or natural cover, whatever or wait till still nights if you can ) I built an Observatory but I still don't do much on windy nights.
3/ You're in the right ball park with exposures. Light pollution may dictate what you can get away with, the more the shorter. Are you guiding or just tracking ? Unless your mount is very accurately aligned with SCP and mechanically almost perfect the shorter the exposure time the better due to possible drift.

Is your camera mounted with a 2" or 1.25" T Adapter ? Either way it will be threaded and capable of taking a suitable filter. I've used Astronomik CLS against Light Pollution and there are others. There is a screw thread on the inside of the adapter tube to suit.

Your RAW should be stacked in a suitable program , DSS seems to be the default. It will save the stacked final image as a TIF file which will be big as well. But any Photoshop like software can take that and convert and resize it to jpeg format for uploading to the web.
TIF is used as it is an almost lossless format to save all your precious data.

I also go through any exposure collection before processing and check for dud frames with stretched stars or shake etc. DSS does do this but I find it helps to get rid of the obvious ones, saves processing time.
I also shoot in RAW +jpeg at the camera. Then I can do quick checks before I process the RAW files. The jpeg is a small proof image and quite handy later.

Hope this helps, keep us posted as to progress and if you have any more questions etc come on back.

Cheers ( and Good luck, have fun!! )
Brent