Hi David, yes altitude makes a real difference in these increasingly humid skies here in the UK. I try and avoid observing anything below 30 degrees altitude and travel to the Canaries for lower latitude objects. I often note that cameras seem to punch through the clagg better than visual but they are still affected. Re your excellent image, I note the double cluster is prominent but NGC 957 is barely noticeable as an OC and looks more like just a denser star field whereas in the 24″ it looked a decent cluster. Equally I can’t fit the double cluster in the big scope and need a much smaller scope for that.
Andrew