As a teenager I was pretty interested in astronomy. Had a 4" reflector and learned quite a bit about the sky. I remained interested but didn't have a scope and really hadn't planned on getting one till I was thumbing thru an catalog from Orion Telescopes that listed some nice scopes at what seemed like a good price. After some checking on the web I ordered an 8" reflector and have been having a great time relearning the sky, and spotting deep space objects (nebulae, star clusters, binary stars, and galaxies) that I had never seen before. Here's a few pics and my progress thru Messier's list of deep-space objects.
I've used a very low-tech approach to taking some pictures thru my telescope: just set a very high speed exposure and then jam my digital camera up against the eyepiece and press the shutter. I was blown away the first time it worked!
