"Rick Johnson" wrote
....
It seems the only clear nights I get are also moon lit

Rick,

That's better than here, where we have had no clear nights at all for
several weeks. There have been several clear days, but I didn't get the
solar h-alpha out.


This galaxy was much bigger than I expected......

If you ever re-do it you can just rotate the camera.

Like all of the smaller galaxies in the M-81 group, this one has probably
been involved in collisions with M-81 and that sparked massive star
formation. The entire group is immersed in dust and gas. Also, as some
amateur astronomers doing deep wide-fields have "discovered" (or at least
brought to everyone's attention) the area of Ursa Major is filled with high
galactic altitude Milky Way dust. Still, I think NGC 4236 is just a very
blue galaxy.

I also found the background galaxies interesting. There seems to be a
distant cluster behind the top portion of NGC 4236 (as shown in your
picture).

Perhaps you could just cut of the top 5 or 10 feet of the offending tree?
If the state gives you a hard time, blame it on the squirrels.

George N