glojo Loc: South Devon, England

I'm afraid my love and devotion to my lovely wife still burns within me so unfortunately I will not be trading her in anytime in the foreseeable future. :thumbup:

No offence taken and she goes out to her observatory in the depths of winter wearing more clothing than I guess most residents of Florida will have in their entire wardrobe!! At times I envy you living in a warmer climate..

I see that the author is US based but is their location as nice as the Florida Keys? :) (Trying to keep on topic) :thumbup:

I will have to start a thread on this topic as I am a chatterbox that enjoys posting images :oops: :oops: Apologies for this image and if required please feel free to remove

ngc1514 Loc: Atlanta, Ga., Lancaster, Oh. and Stuart, Fl.

Meade LX200... Nice scope! The observatory looks pretty sweet as well. Nothing makes observing easier than opening up the observatory and sticking your eye to the eyepiece.

glojo Loc: South Devon, England

:) Wife likes her 'peeping tom' observing of space and I like my photography although it would be a great challenge to connect the camera to the telescope and take some images of the Moon.

Most important though is we try to keep on topic and help with those 'First Moon Shots' :thumbup: :thumbup: :wink:

ngc1514 Loc: Atlanta, Ga., Lancaster, Oh. and Stuart, Fl.

Attaching the camera to the scope is a breeze. Just buy a t-ring adapter for the scope. Not sure who sells them in the UK, but they are inexpensive.

The adapter screws onto the back of the scope where the "visual back" fits - the thing into which you stick your right angle prism and eyepiece - and a t-ring for your camera make screws onto that.

Looks like this:

http://www.shopatron.com/products/productdetail/Meade+%2362+T-Adapter+%2307352+%28SCT+thread%29/part_number=07352/1323.0.1.1.42062.45518.0.0.0?pp=8&

glojo Loc: South Devon, England

Thanks for that but I am the issue and not the gadgetry :( I can either prop myself up to my full height with the aid of crutches, or lay flat on a reclined wheelchair... A sort of 'all or nothing' type option. Getting into the observatory would be a 'challenge' but getting down to a level which would let me play with the toys is sadly not an option. THANK you though for the link.

Photography has never appealed to my better half as she much prefers looking at the 'real thing' as opposed to taking pictures of it! :( Each to their own although that beast could take some amazing images.

I have been looking forward to seeing more shots taken by Pied as this is his thread and hopefully folks will very quickly jump in and offer more constructive advice!

I have apologised to the author for the thread drift and hopefully everyone respects the fact that we are now shooting the breeze until Pied might want to submit more of his very nice pictures?

For those that are interested the type of telescope we can see can track planets and those that want to, can take multiple pictures of a subject and then stack them to give the one amazing image

ngc1514 Loc: Atlanta, Ga., Lancaster, Oh. and Stuart, Fl.

Still not a problem, glojo. Just more money!

Swap out your DSLR for a "real" astro cam and run the whole thing from the house.

The LX200 is a GOTO telescope, the motions and pointing of which can be controlled by any number of programs. Astro cams like the SBIG units are controlled by computer as well.

Most of the guys doing imaging these days are not even near their telescopes, but talk to the observatory to open and close the dome, point the scopes and control the camera all across an internet connection. A couple of guys I know have observatories at Georgia's Deerlick Astronomy Village and they do all their imaging from the comfort of their Atlanta homes 90 miles away.

But I side with your wife. If the photons don't register on my retina, they don't count! The joy to me is not seeing a photo of something, but seeing the object itself; using the observing skills honed over the last, um, more years than I wish to mention, to ferret out some faint fuzzy and actually SEE it.

That's what keeps me at the eyepiece.

JBledsoe Loc: Caldwell, Idaho

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Photographing the moon is easy. What is lighting the moon? The sun. So use the same exposure as you would use on a bright sunny day. If you shoot outdoor shots in bright sunlight at ISO 200 and expose at 1/200 sec at f/16 then use that on the moon shots. Works every time.