After one of Michelle’s colleagues saw some of the telescope photos that i had taken he offered us his telescope he had had for a long time but not ended up using. This telescope is a refactor telescope with lenses rather than mirrors so is generally better at solar system planet viewing than deep space, the tracking makes it easier to take pictures though.
I managed to get a few pictures with my phone and a mount but it was very hard to get the phone to stay in focus and also adjust the exposure. Looking through the scope does give very clear views though.
After a while i decided to get a basic telescope camera, this replaces the telescope eyepiece, plugs into a laptop and is high speed as well as being very sensitive to allow for low exposure. I have had a bit of a play with this and got some OK results so far, i hadn’t really read how to use it initially so with some practice the shots should get better.
It is much easier to use on the new refactor telescope because it can track an object, with the reflector scope as it doesn’t have tracking there is motion blur as well as having to move the telescope all the time to try and keep the object in the field of view. Some of the pictures so far are below. I’ll add more posts as i work out how to use the camera and get used to the image processing too.
Jupiter and Galilean moons over exposed for the planet but ok for the moons 
Jupiter 
Jupiter and Galilean moons – combined this is a combination of 2 pictures taken at 2 different exposures to get Jupiter and the 4 Galilean moons correctly exposed 
Saturn
Moon 
Moon 
Moon 
Moon 
Moon 
Moon 
Moon 
Moon
