Sunday, October 01, 2006

Moon Shots Coming?


Several months ago, I bought a telescope adapter for my Canon camera. I hoped to some day take some full-frame (or closer) shots of the moon through a telescope we have in the house. I kinda gave up when I couldn't get anything to work with it. Tonight, I tried the last thing I could think of, before I put the adapter up for sale at eBay - a 3x Barlow lens.

I inserted it into the adapter and tightened it down with the thumbscrew. I attached it to the body of my Rebel GII and slid it into the telescope tube in place of the diagonal. (The diagonal is the 90 degree adapter that the eyepiece goes into.) My camera was mounted and ready to go, looking straight down the telescope tube. After getting it lined up with the just-more-than-half moon, focused it in, and voila! One beautiful view of the moon! It filled the frame, but by its nature it had a little vignetting. That's the same effect you'd get by looking down a paper towel tube. The edges of the view are not rectangular, but a round black border. I took several shots, guessing at various shutter speeds. After I go through about 15 more shots, I'll see how I did. If any come out, I'll post 'em here.

1 comment:

Shelley said...

That's exciting. That opens up a whole universe for photography!

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