I've just recently stepped up from taking pics of M31 at roughly 2.5 million ly away, to M51 (just south of the Big Dipper's handle, you see I'm from the north) at between 10-40 million light years away.
And I'm only using a 58mm app EOS lens. I suppose the known universe is about 1000 times further away. measured in billions instead of millions of ly.
If my little lens is doing this well for something 1000 times closer than for the Hubble, I'd say that's good.
But I tried stacking it in DSS. And I did well to do a dark frame, no flat in this.
And my "drift alignment" could be better, as it starts to trail at even 30 seconds, sometimes best at 1 minute. So if the alignment is better and I learn to autoguide, I assume my pics will be better.
PS: As you see there are at least 2 types of alignment: polar and LX200 computer alignment. That last on making sure the onboard computer knows where it's pointed (thinks it's pointed right) in the sky.
And there's a MaxPoint program (from Cyanogen, on the net) that help LX200's with their precision pointing. You know 1 arcminute is roughly equal to the thickness of a fingernail at arms distance!
So this is my pic of M51: interacting spiral galaxies.
It was taken with an EOS 70-300 APO lens at 214mm fl and a T2i, piggyback on that Meade LX200GPS 10" F10 SCT.
No autoguiding, so it trailed. Need better drift alignment.
