Sadly the moon destroyed our viewing and hid a lot of the good stuff, but it turns out that i quite enjoy photography. I virtually put aside the Skywatcher 250px dob and just let others look through it whilst i set up with canon 7d and shot an hours worth of 30 seconds exposure pics. Timelapse vid and startrails were both generated (see below) and next time i intend to shoot 3 or 4 hours at a slower rate....
now i can see how easily people get the photography bug !