This isn't a Hubble image by any means, but I am immensely pleased with it nonetheless. Last night I couldn't sleep - a pattern the past several Sundays. Rather than lay in bed twiddling my thumbs in the dark, I decided to just accept my night owl tendencies and I got my "new" telescope out. I bought it in July but haven't done much with it since then. It's a Meade 8" LX-200 ACF and is the most powerful scope I've ever owned. Schmidt-Cassegrains aren't considered the greatest for photography because of their long focal length, but you use what you have! So my first target for the night was the Great Nebula in Orion, M42. I had not yet see it through my scope and I was blown away by the view through the eyepiece - a 41mm TeleVue Panoptic. I could see details that I had never seen before in my life (my previous scope was only 4.5") and I could make out all four stars of the Trapezium for the first time ever. It was amazing! And then as I sat there I thought "what the heck" and I went and got my Canon 50D camera and a prime focus adapter so I could mount it on the telescope. Focusing was hit or miss since I don't currently have a Bahtinov mask or any other focusing tool (I ordered one from Amazon this morning). But after getting it focused as best I could and doing a series of test shots to determine a good exposure length, I settled on 5s at ISO 800 and took a series of 25 exposures. Then I did 5 black exposures with the lens cover on. I pulled those images into the Deep Sky Stacker program and let it do it's processing. The initial result looked disappointing and didn't show any nebulosity at all, but by playing with the luminance settings I was able to bring out the details. The result is what you see above. All told, I think I have found a new hobby that will be just as expensive as Star Citizen has been for me! Is there a Concierge forum for amateur astronomers, because I think I'm on my way there now. :D