Adventures in Telescopic Photography
A while ago I lucked into some telescopes that were being discarded as trash - the weren't being kept up, and the owner had moved on to what he termed "professional grade" equipment. His trash was something hopelessly beyond my budget to pick up as a first order product, so I was more than happy to piece them back together, clean them up, and generally invest some sweat equity bringing them back on line.
The result? Moby Dick & Ol' Blue, pictured here (please forgive the mess, lots of the home organization is in remodeling flux):
Moby Dick - 10" Newtonian Reflector Telescope
Ol' Blue - 8" Newtonian Reflector Telescope
Cat included for size reference (she was a good sport about it too, especially considering I had to wake her from a nap; please note that she is a large cat, too).
The barrel on Ol' Blue is 48" end to end, housing an 8" diameter primary mirror. Moby Dick is a hair shorter at 44.5" in length, with a 10" primary mirror, but on account of its equatorial mount with counterweight is WAY heavier and thus harder to cart about for simple experimentation.
They did take some work to get functional again, and there were no objective lenses (eyepieces) with them, so I've borrowed some Plössl type lenses (25mm & 10mm) from a friend to practice with and give me a good baseline for shopping around. All told it's been a good experience, I've learned a ton about Newtonian telescopes, and have thoroughly enjoyed the views they afford.
Enough so that I want to share those views. My eventual goal is to get a good camera mounting kit for Rachelle's EOS 5D Mark II, and haul Moby Dick out to the west dessert to do some awesome astrophotography. Before making that kind of investment (especially regarding time) I figure I should practice a little bit and get used to the variables involved. This morning marks my first attempts, which I will generously label "encouraging."
My setup was about as handicapped as it could possibly be. It was a cool gray (rather than sunny) morning, and my home and yard are poorly situated to see anything at a distance - and I felt like staying indoors, which compounded things by constraining what I could shoot even further: would need to be a distant object through windows that have not been maintained on a particular cleaning schedule. In order to get the telescope positioned correctly to see some mountains (and be pointed far enough away from the sun so as not to risk damage to self or equipment if it happened to come from behind its clouds) I had to mount it on a stool, and then put the camera on its tripod on top of a card table to position it for my first attempts at afocal telescopic photography.