Tips on shooting the moon thru telescope

[onlybylight]

Hi all. I recently purchased the 55-250 canon tele lens for my 550 d and was satisfied with my shots of the moon...till I saw some really amazing ones on flickr.. Just by using the humble coolpix. Apparently the person took the picture through a telescope.

So I'm thinking of purchasing a telescope so I can take better pictures of the night sky/ moon. Any tips? And how would I go about doing that? Aiming the camera through the viewing port? How do I get a clear picture through that as the viewport is usually way smaller than my lens? What exposure should I use? The same 1/125 that I do without the telescope?

 

[Reportage]

why not send a PM to the person and ask directly how it was done?

 

[hohobaba]

Hi TS, i have experience of shooting moon through dslr, basically u will need 2 more pieces of equipment total cost around $100 to equip the DSLR to the telescope objective.

One is a T-ring that attaches to your camera and uses similar screw ring size as your normal lenses, and the other piece is the barrel that goes into the 1.25" or 2" eyepiece/stardiagonal slot on the optical tube of the telescope. Manual focus is needed via the focussing knob on the telescope optical tube.

Both items need to be bought at specialized astro stores and are custom for each brand SLR.
(eg. my set is for Nikon) you can attempt to take other larger sized astronomical setup such as pleides and maybe smaller constellations and asterisms using this method, or if your OTA is large and u have a good tracking mount u can even try taking some deep sky objects such as open clusters and globular clusters.

If you want to take pictures of nebulas, you need to modify the chip of the SLR which will void its warrenty as normal SLR have a filter that filters away the particular light that is maximally emitted by most nebulae.

here is a link on a local online shop that sells what you need:
http://www.astrobargains.com/Astro-misc.htm

Cheers.

 

[Gactac]

Hey! I think the main think you must realize is that Astrophotography is very different from normal day to day photography. If you are really interested in astronomy, then there is a lot of things to read up on. Well you said considering getting a telescope, but remember that a reasonable scope for astro should cost around MAYBE a $1000. Not very sure what the exact cost is for the cheapest scopes for astrophotography but be ready to fork out around this amount.

There is a lot more than just throwing a camera into the scope. Main thing that most people do is to should loads of frames (or a video) and then choose the best few before stacking them together and sharpening them. You can read up more here (the process for processing planetary images is the same as lunar) http://www.skyandtelescope.com/howto/astrophotography/How_to_Process_Planetary_Images.html Most probably, the picture you saw on flickr was achieved through stacking. Here is what i managed with my D5000 through an amateur scope.

However, if you just want a simple shot of the moon, your 250mm lens should be good enough. You could go through the same process as mentioned above, and i bet you that you will be quite happy with the results. Btw, I read some where that to shoot the moon, use f/11 at 1/x shutter speed where x=iso. Eg f/11, 1/200 ISO200. Yeah feel free to ask me any questions.

 

[shierwin]

Youo may be interested in reading this article. on how to shoot the moon:

http://www.wrotniak.net/photo/moon/index.html

 

[JJLoke]

Im an astrophotographer and I can say that you will read up way alot more than u think by reading up a few post.

Telescope is a different class altogether compared to camera lens. A true telescope tube and lens only (~3kg and above), cost a minimum of S$1000 (3 inch diameter lens)

U cannot do much with a 3" lens (low light grasp) unless with a tracking motor

u will now need a sturdy metal astro-grade mount (~20kg), S$800 minimum
To take stars and planets, u will need a tracking motorised mount, motor cost S$500 minimum

Telescope acessories will set u back close to another S$1000

Learning to read, understand and navigate the night sky. A few months.

And that is the basic gear without camera.

For camera attachment, u will need:

Focal reducer
Barlow
Field flatterner
Filters (2" filter cost minimum S$100)

After that, u will need to learn proper alignment for long exposure up to 5 mins, followed by post image processing (stacking), dark frame subtracting (noise removal)

That just part of it

BTW, there is no place for u to rent the equipment, neither are most people willing to lend u theirs. Check out the clubs and astro society locally. U can learn alot.

 

[gabrielteo]

I came across this item on ebay compared to your setup it seems like a real steal. But I suspect that the quality is not up to your standards? but for that price is it worth it?