Weymouth Astronomy

Your Images

If you would like your images published on this site - please send in electronic form to Weymouth Astronomy via the Contact Us section of the site along with your name and equipment used and if possible the date and location of when the image was taken. Rob Hodgkinson's winning image of NGC 4565

New to Astrophotography?

For beginners wishing to take up Astrophotography it can seem an expensive and intimidating hobby to get into. Yet this does not have to be the case. The following text and image was supplied courtesy of Mike lenzi with the intention of encouraging others to have a go at Astrophotography, even using just the simplest of equipment.


Imaging the MoonThe photo was taken using an old 130mm (5.1"), F900 Skywatcher Newtonian reflector, on an undriven tripod mounted equatorial, using a Meade 18mm wide angle 31.7mm (1.25") eyepiece, giving a magnification of x50. The camera used is a Fuji Finepix s602 zoom DSLR, it was attached by means of a Fuji 55mm filter adaptor tube (necessary for clearance of the auto zoom lens which protrudes when the camera is switched on) coupled to a simple 3 point screw short adaptor mounted on the lens body.

The only other bit of 'equipment' was a short strip of 10mm wide thick parcel brown paper, found necessary to take up the difference in the diameters of the eyepiece and camera adaptor to ensure complete ridigity and centralisation.

The camera was set to manual operation, the image was finely focused using the camera zoom and viewing the camera screen. The aperture of f5.6 was selected and the speed set at 1/15 sec. The telescope (previously polar aligned) was set so that the Moon was coming into the field of view and the equatorial mount locked. The camera was set for auto shutter with a 10 second delay, in order to prevent shake. When the Moon had sufficiently come into the field of view, the camera was activated and the result is the attached 'snapshot'. Whilst it is not to a high standard, the results are satisfying none the less considering the simplicity of the method and equipment used.


Above Text and Image Courtesy of Mike Lenzi. Click on image to view full size. Image will open in a new browser window.