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ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY CAMERAS PHOTOS EYEPIECE PROJECTION

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EYEPIECE PROJECTION

An eyepiece can be placed inside the camera adapter which slides into the focusing tube. Now the image is magnified by the eyepiece which may be as high as 300x! Some adaptors will only take eyepieces with a short length which is usually a high magnification eyepiece. This eyepiece assisted, high magnification is great for details on planets like Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, Neptune and Uranus as small coloured disks, zooming right into craters on the Moon and separation of binary star systems. Of course right now I'm going to mention the difficulty of tracking the object while exposing the film using these high magnifications.
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Experience at your own particular setup and practise will yield some good shots, but for you to be able to track the objects accurately using any of the photography methods mentioned the equatorial mount needs to be setup correctly and pointing accurately at the South Celestial Pole (SCP). An explanation of how to align your equatorial mount to the SCP can be
found at setting circles. Other methods of improving your photographs can
be found at tips, mounts or balancing.
  • Keeping a log of your shots while they are being taken will put you well on the way to learning what works best for your setup. When you get your shots back from processing, and you find a particularly good one, you can look up and see what you did. The things you should write down include what number shot it is, the object, the magnification, the method and how long the exposure went for. It's also a good to note if the seeing conditions for that particular night are good or, not so good by looking at an object you know and judging its clarity.

  • If you take shots from a location where there is light pollution, it will cause longer shots to have a blue or grey backgrounds instead of black.

  • The darker the site, the shorter the exposure needs to be.

  • For minimal extra cost, faster, specialised and hypersensitised film can be ordered from your local supplier or through us. You will need to enquire.

In order to photograph the Sun, the simplest method is to just take a picture of the projection made by the telescope onto a piece of cardboard,
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paper or specifically designed plate for Sun projecting.
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photos eyepiece projection
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