Canon 20D does Sun and Moon

Hi all,

Only the intense suffering of studying for my upcoming finals could make me take the time out to dabble in some astrophotography today.

I tried setting up my Canon 20D with the Meade ETX 70 but couldn't attain focus. I succeded with my 9" Dob and 70mm Skylux. Both of these are with the Skylux. The sun's focal length was 700mm (x1.6 crop). The moon's was twice that due to a barlow lens. I had to take the top and the bottom and merge them together. (I'm terrible at doing that). I underexposed the moon - my back was just a bit too sore to acrry the scope out again. Sorry"

Anyway, I'm very pleased for a first effort. I can't wait for an eclipse to test them further.

Daniel

Daniel,

They are two top class photos!! WTG!!

To make the ETX70 reach prime focus on an SLR like the 20D you need the meade 64ST photo adaptor ring. This bushes out the rear cell of the ETX so your T ring will thread directly on. The result of this is the camera is just a tad closer in and hust about makes prime focus.

Keep up the good work.

Nice pictures!

I especially like seeing pictures of the entire moon like that in one shot.

Bart.

Those are two v. nice shots! Well done!

Daniel - that's a lovely shot of the sun. The colour is really nice and I like the limb darkening. The sunspots round it off nicely.

The moon, whilst flat, is still a nice shot. I'd try that shot again without the Barlow. You'll only need to take one shot and the exposure time will be less. The full moon tends to be flat anyway but like Bart, I really like full full moon shots.

Your focus is on the spot too.

These are nice shots through the Skylux - I look forward to seeing more! Well done.

Dave McD

ps - now, if only we could all take shots like this...

www.jrfoster.com/images/Moon24MAR05_07UTjrf.jpg

Thanks for all the compliments and encouragement guys.


Dave G, thanks for the extra info on the ETX70. I'll check that out when the exams are under me. As it is, I think I'll be photographing from the Skylux. 700mm is a good length for total solar eclipses.

Also, I couldn't achieve focus on my 8.75" DTG Dob without the 2x lens in the barlow. Any idea how I could solve that. 1,300mm might be a nice fit! (Just). I've plenty of time to fix that, I realised that I need some counter-weigths to balance the camera on the Dob. I placed the ETX70 under the tube to stop it sliding. Very unsuccessful.

Have you played with a dSLR yet, Dave? If we both get some spare time over the summer, I'd be happy to let you test drive the 20D. I'd be interested to see what she can do.



Dave McD, I was using a thousand oaks filter for the sun, so it actually came out orange (the colour with which I prefer to view the sun). However I tinkered with the hue, saturation and contrast in DPP. I'm surprised the colour was pleasing to you - most people say my WB and so on are way off in general photography.

Not sure what you mean by flat, but I think the severe under-exposure of the moon might be to blame. I had to bump both halves of the moon up by 1 exposure just to get what I did. I could have levelled it in PS but all sorts of horrible artifacts like banding etc would show up. I also took 2 photos using the Skylux without the 2x barlow but I'm sorry to say that the focus was well off. I'm guessing that was just user error. Anyway, the moon isn't going anywhere soon (I hope) so there's plenty of time to practice. But it may have to wait for June and the end of exams.

Very nice image that you linked. We have our benchmark! :lol:



Daniel