During my last test with the new equatorial platform, I tried several dim targets, including the Triangulum galaxy. I took 35 one minute long exposures at 1600 ISO, and I was able to just barely capture it over the light pollution and extremely bright full moon that was out that night. With it being so large and dim, I had to stretch the resulting data a lot. This really brought out the dusk motes and vignetting that are present in the equipment, and the flats I took that night were not good enough. I tried a new method for taking flats by using a studio softbox, and they are definitely better. Some of the really large dust motes were still present after preprocessing, but I removed them with a bit of image manipulation.
I think the result is not too bad, now. My camera needs a good cleaning, though.
