Well, as expected, didn't get a fat lot to show people out of last night.

Mainly experimented with exposure times, practiced polar alignment etc.

What is clear is that stacking images is going to be essential, because at the moment, it's hard to see anything but stars in the pictures I have taken. In one picture though, with a little processing, you can just about see a little more....

Near the centre, and again halfway across the right of the image, there are two faint little smudges that are just discernible as galaxies! Wahey!

I believe they are a part of Markarian's chain, a beautiful sprawl of galaxies that trickles down between Leo and Virgo.

Other than that I learned that my maximum exposure times, for now will be about 3 minutes, 5 if I'm really well aligned.

I also had trouble with my guidance system, hence why my exposure times are so short. I couldn't actually pick up any stars with the guider, although in fairness, I did only try while the sky was fairly bright, so the sensor may have been being washed out.

On the positive side though, I did find out that even on long exposures, I wasn't getting "sensor glow" - a frustrating disease with older DSLR's where heat from the working sensor causes a big orange smear across the top of your images. That's always nice to know!