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I was watching the ISS tonight and decided to get a moon pic, it's taken through 'my sons' reflector scope with my digital camera, took me AGES to take even this one (and I still ended up with a blur on the bottom left)
https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3812/...582059c16c.jpg
Any suggestions for best settings? It's only a compact camera and would focus well then bloom like mad! (and yes I know it's technically upside down!)
Astronomers have no concept of which way up things need to be :o Physicists assign a minus sign to the magnification of a two element telescope to show that the image has been inverted, we don't normally bother in astronomy though!
How to take pictures using a compact camera through a telescope? Challenging. The best results I've seen have used a jig to hold the camera, but it's certainly not easy. I need to have a little think about the best placement of the camera WRT to the focal point of your scope. Were you just holding the camera up to the eyepiece? In this case you'd have a tiny range over which the camera would actually be able to accommodate for the telescope's power.
I don't really know enough about compact cameras to advise on settings I'm afraid - but there's certainly knowledgeable photographers on Hexus. A few years ago converted CCD webcams were all the rage - they can be mounted at the telescope's objective focal point, you may be able to find one of them (Phillips Toucam Pro) fairly cheap these days (the picture quality was VGA though).
I reckon that if we figure the correct placement for the camera you could probably knock up some sort of jig to hold it and get some fairly decent pictures like that... I'll have a think... It's not something I'd considered before but that's an impressive shot of harvest coloured moon (not the right time of year but must be due to the impending Lunar eclipse)... better than I would have thought possible using that method :)
Yes it was just held to the eyepiece, not a perfect solution!
This was the only image that came out this colour (plus a bit of pp)
I'll definitely be trying again though!
Yes Rob, you definitely need a jig, try here :
http://www.scopesnskies.com/prod/Ast...tra/PH047.html
This is for compact cameras.
For DSLRs you would need to replace the eyepiece with the camera via another adaptor :
http://www.scopesnskies.com/prod/ant...nosepiece.html
and you'll more than likely need to use an extender with the latter too, to get focus.
As for exposures, you need a very fast shot to avoid motion blur. Also try grabbing a dozen shots and stack em with Registax :
http://www.astronomie.be/registax/
Then, and if you're very lucky, you might end up with :
https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5292/...c08d33c42f.jpg
Good Luck !!
I've got a modified Microsoft Lifecam Cinema HD (720p), I followed this guide:
Guide - http://timtrott.co.uk/converting-mic...rophotography/
and bought one o' these adaptors:
Adaptor - http://www.billetparts.co.uk/catalog...ter-p-122.html
It's great hooked upto a laptop if you're showing a few people, rather than fighting over the eyepiece. There are also some very impressive imaging results online using this setup, although I've not had too much success. I'll try and remember to upload my Saturn pic this evening.
Vid (Not mine) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7F76ccRmOI
Yep, if u use a webcam you can take a short vid and stick that thru Registax, more common for other planets than moon tho'. You may have to convert the video to uncompressed AVI too IIRC.