M101 Pinwheel galaxy first attempt

 Tripod level, good polar alignment, clear skies, good 3 star alignment and it still took me 30 minutes to get it in frame. Ended up having to plate solve a couple of times to see where I was looking.

Eventually let it run on 100 x 1 minute exposures at gain 14.3.

I think it would have worked better with 2 minute exposures but I was worried about star trailing, I shouldn't have been as it stayed solid for 2 hours.

The moon rising didn't really help things very much.

Other things in the image, lots of nebula...