Saturday, January 3, 2009

Tristan got a sweet little telescope for Christmas this year.
The other night, the sky was finally clear enough to see the moon and the planets that had decided to align themselves. We were just figuring out the telescope so didn’t get any real close ups of the planets, but wow, the moon looked incredible. The detail is amazing, and that was without another viewfinder extension that would magnify it another 3Xs. I went online and looked into what it would take to get some astrological photographs. There really aren’t any special mounts or adapters for DSLR cameras, but it explained a way to do it using just a tripod.

Basically, you just lock the telescope in on your subject, set the camera up on a tripod, point it into the telescope’s viewfinder, and shoot away.
Not very high tech there, but whatever, I was even less high tech because I didn’t have a tripod with me. I just focused, held as still as possible, and shot. The photos I got aren’t half bad either. I can’t wait until the moon gets more full so I can try it again with the proper setup.
I think I love Tristan’s telescope more than he does haha.

Anyway, here’s the best photo I got out of it. It’s actually sized down quite a bit to fit on the page. Full-sized, it would have been about 24 inches across.

Enjoy.



KoP