One of the challenges I've set myself is to photograph a galaxy such
as ngc 1566. This is a spiral galaxy about 8 arcmins in apparent
diameter situated around 37 million light years away. It is magnitude
10, on the night just visble in the eyepiece as a smudge when I
wobbled the scope (10" SCT working at f/10). The moon was over half
full, so that didn't help. My 36 minute exposure (see albums)is
sufficient to show the structure of the galaxy, but the image
histogram indicates I needed about double that for a good image.
Preferably on a moonless night! Still, someway towards satisfying the
challenge.

Serena