Here's an aurora picture I took last winter, just after I got my new camera. This is from my home, shooting up through the trees that hem in the northern horizon.

Is there a maximum limit to the size of photos I can put up here? This probably falls under the heading of 'should have read the notes'....

This is a picture I took on my way home from Denali National Park. This cow moose was on the side of the road with her two calves. One of them is pretty well hidden by her, but you can just make out the lighter color of its leg among the four darker legs of the cow.

This was shot on a Canon 7D, shutter 1/500, f/7.1, ISO 800, originally in RAW, but since converted to jpg. How much of the original meta data come through this whole conversion and post-on-the-internet business?

I am interested in getting into astrophotography, and I find myself wondering about the advisability of reflexive lenses. How good are these lenses? I have found several for under $200 in the 500mm to 800mm (f/6.3 to f/8) range. All these lenses are manual focus and require an adapter to fit onto a given camera. The price point makes me suspicious: I know that a lot of lenses run quite a bit more expensive than this, but I really don't have anything to compare to. The lenses I already own are quite a bit fancier (read: complex, computerized, stabilized), if much shorter focal lengths.

How good are these types of lenses for astrophotography? That does seem to be what they are marketed for (hbphotovideo.com)

New to photography, in the summer I like to take pictures of the wildlife in Alaska. In the winter, I'd like to get into taking pictures of the sky. So far, it's just dabbles.