I was pleased that it turned out so well even for a fairly quick cloud-dodging attempt. The trick I did to pull out the trapesium was to do a few short exposures, then a few longer ones. Then I could tweak it in Photoshop to not overexpose the middle. I just hope I get some more chances to play with this area of the sky this winter. It's one of my favorite targets. I basically got cheated out last winter here in Seattle since it was just as miserable.
I was using my unmodified Canon 10D last year, so my images always came out very blue. This camera is great, I don't have to struggle to pull out some nice red!

Tom
www.eastsideastro.org/observatory