Comment by dylan604
Yeah, in astro, the quality of the lens shows in much more disappointing ways that regular photography. Any softness from the lens can be part of the art in regular photography, but in astro is a lesser image.
Maybe I missed it, but where in Europe are you? Are the temps part of your softness issue? I'm in Texas, and during the summer when it's prime time for central part of the Milky Way the seeing is horrible from the extreme high temps and the disturbance it causes in the air.
I've been looking at getting a dedicated astro camera as well to reduce that weight as well as free up the camera body to go back to its primary mission of time lapse. I've already gone down the rabbit hole deep enough to have a secondary scope and camera to use as a guide scope to overcome any of the slight mis-alignments during polar alignment. The hole is deep and easy to fall into. Be careful when looking down that hole wondering how far you'd be willing to go as you'll be deeper than you expected before you realize you've left the edge.
> slight mis-alignments during polar alignment
For long enough observation there is no such thing as correct polar alignment on earth, thanks to atmospheric lensing. The density of the atmosphere shifts stars up with increasing amounts depending on how low they are.
If your mount can accurately track in dec, then using a more complete pointing model-- the accommodates this lensing along with the major mount orthogonality errors-- generally eliminates the need for a guide camera.