I am interested in what it takes to shoot through a telescope. I have a 4" reflector (cheap) that I would like to shoot pictures through. I have M's, Viso's and an R. What adapters does one need, or what procedure do you use? Can anyone point to me to a site with some tips or information?

Thank-you for your time and interest.

-- Mark A. Johnson (logic@gci.net), December 22, 2001

Answers

Mark:

Type "astrophotography" into your search engine -- you'll get about 4000 hits that cover this subject in detail. From simple camera on a T-mount to telescope adapter to complex with sighting finders and motorized tracking.

In general, if you are going to take photographs of celestial bodies like nebulae, you need special filters and very long exposures (as long as an hour) that will require your camera be placed in a motorized mount so it can compensate for the movement of the earth. Interestingly, these bodies are quite large, and are better photographed with moderate telephoto lenses in the 100mm to 300mm range.

If you want to photograph stars, you need very high magnification, diffraction limited scopes that are very expensive, lest you get photos of "triangular" shaped and multi-colored stars due to the coma and chromatic abberation present in most mid-level scopes.

If you want to photograph the moon, you're in luck! A relatively simple scope with an SLR and a "T"-mount to telescope adapter will do the job. Exposures are relatively short -- and since the moon is lit by the sun, you can use BDE (sunny 16) for your exposure. Most reflectors have a clear aperture of about f8 and an actual aperture of about f11, so your exposure will be around 1/250 sec with ISO 100 film. But bracket just in case!

-- Jack Flesher (jbflesher@msn.com), December 23, 2001.

Check out:

www.buytelescopes.com

They are based up the raod from me. They seem like nice enough people and they sell Leica gear also. So they should be able to answer any questions you might have.

-- Josh Root (rootj@att.net), December 23, 2001.

Sol ar Eclipse Photography with ETX Meade

-- martin tai (martin.tai@capcanada.com), December 23, 2001.

Hi Jack - a question right up my alley (I have a 3" Apochromatic ED refractor that, though I love, could sure buy a lot of Leica gear if I could find a buyer). There are a number of ways to photograph with your telescope. A simple T2 mount will allow you to photography through the telescope with your R. But for faint objects you will need a clock/motor drive on an equatorial mount (which most 4" reflectors come with). Most good camera shops or shops selling microscopes/telescopes should be able to order an inexpensive drive for your scope. But even withour a drive you can get reasonable long exposures if you have a properly set up finder scope with crosshairs. With practice you can use your slowmotion controls to follow the movement of the sky (which is of course the movement of the earth) for exposures of 15 minutes or so. As someone mentioned earlier however, the wonderful photos of 'deep sky' objects you see in magazines are often the results of hours+ exposures with filters and hypersensitized film (usually Fuji 1600 that is super-cooled) and not for the rank amatuer. Great photos can even be had of wide field objects (globular clusters, milkyway, etc) with anything from a 100 to 300 mm lens 'piggybacked' on the main scope (again an inexpensive biggyback mount can be had reasonably cheap). Of course the lates craze (if your into computers) is an inexpensive (now under $500) CCD camera that attaches to your telescope, loads the images directly into your computer where you can enhance them spectrally as well as optically. Contact me at my e-mail if you'd like more info.

-- Bob Todrick (bobtodrick@yahoo.com), December 23, 2001.