The moon
 

A view of the waxing gibbous moon from tonight. Taken with my new telescope (Meade ETX-90RA) and Nikon Coolpix 995. It's actually a montage of two shots.

<b>Nice.</b>

(I am thoroughly impressed.)

Thank you.. though the moon is certainly the easiest target to shoot. What I REALLY want are planetary shots, but it may be hopeless to get Jupiter at this point in the season. And I'm not sure my interest lies in this direction anyway. If you want to do photography, you (or at least I) spend so much time futzing with the photo equipment that you don't have a chance to sit & look at what's in the telescope. You can always admire your own photos after the fact, but if I want to look at pictures, there are far better ones out there than I'll ever take with my modest resources. (Besides, the state of the art seems to be "webcam" imaging. And the last thing I want is to drag a laptop computer out with me to the telescope.) There's something about Jupiter or Saturn coming at you out of the eyepiece.

SD - do you use a tracker of some sort? I had looked into building a barndoor tracker, but found that there are several motorized versions available on the internet already. Any thoughts?

Oh yea - great shot!

Thanks!

I have one telescope with no tracking at all. It's a 4.25" f/5 Dobsonian that I made, theoretically as practice for a larger scope. I'm not sorry I did it, but it was very frustrating due to my lack of mechanical aptitude. I practically never use it.

Then I have the Meade ETX-70. It sits level and just moves up and down and side to side. It has a hand-held computer attached to it that, if properly set up, will automatically track whatever you point it to. Being able to do this is real time is non-trivial from a mathematical standpoint, but of course these days you get it in a package the size of a TV remote control.

My new addition is the ETX-90RA. It is an older, discontinued model. It doesn't have any "brains" like the ETX-70, it just rotates theoretically once every 24 hours. So if you line it up with the axis of rotation pointing at the north celestial pole, it will stay on whatever you point it at.

I guess it depends on what you want to do... in my case I wasnted womething that was better for planetary viewing, and I didn't need the computer gizmo to find planets, so I saved about $200 by getting the older version (which has the same optics as the current ETX-90 with computer control). What were you what to do with the barndoor mount? I've never used one, but they seem easy enough to build & use.

Point your scope towards Mars. it's the closest it's ever going to be in our liftime.

I'm am thoroughly impressed by what you are able to do as a home hobbyist. This is AMAZING.

Thank you wolf, very kind, and I won't deny that I have some small amount of photography skill. But it says more about the availability of cheap but relatively high-quality telescopes and cameras than it does about my capabilities, since I'm just starting out.

And yes, definitely everybody should make some effort to see Mars. It's visible in the predawn sky now, and will be rising at midnight by the start of July I think. Near the end of August it will be closer to us than it has been in the last 60,000 years. Very historic.

Beautful picture.:thumb:
BTW ladies, Mars is where men come from so beware.:D