Very nice pics of M13 and M42! I'll guess that you have a Meade SCT? I worked at Celestron many years ago, and have owned a handful of different Celestron scopes. Right now I have a homemade 14.5" F5.5 Newtonian, optimized for planetary viewing... curved vane spider, 2.1" secondary & a very low profile focuser. It's on a Dobsonian mount (sono-tube) and an equatorial platform. Unfortunately it's just not rigged at all for photography. I'd have to move the mirror forward about 4-6 inches to get it to focus a camera. (Range of focus is one of the beautiful things about SCT scopes)
Where do you do your observing?
On those shots I used an Astronomik light pollution filter with a Canon 40D, shooting raw, images were calibrated, stacked, combined and processed with DSS and PSCS3
No solar filters at this point, but expect to have one in the future.
Mostly I do it at my home about an hour west of the twin cities. Its in a yellow area on the dark sky map. Occasionally (especially in the autumn when I'm out there for hunting season) I'll set up out in western Minnesota where I've got a good dark sky site with power. Its in a blue area on the dark sky map.