Since a young age the heavens have for me been source of awe and wonder, both fascinating and humbling.  Our closest astronomical neighbour of course is the Moon and is an ideal for first foray into astrophotography.

The Moon is a mere 250,000 miles away only 1/400th of the distance between the earth and the sun, through eyes of the camera though it can still appear very far away.
A zoom lens of 200mm or more can help you get better acquainted with it.

The most common mistake that I and everyone makes when taking first taking a picture of the Moon is to use the automatic settings.  The camera tries to adjust the length of the exposure and aperture for a night time shot.  Of course the moon is as bright as a day time object and ends up a blurry washout blob.
To get the picture you want set the camera to shutter priority and set the it to  about 1/200 of a second and press the shutter button.

If you are fortunate to have a very long lens you may find a tripod will help keep you pictures sharp.

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/39630965@N03/5041301266/" title="moon2 by Andrew Thwaites, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4090/5041301266_d2e22df891_m.jpg" width="240" height="104" alt="moon2"></a>

I look forward to seeing some of your photos,

take care

Andrew.