EX1 to Meade SCT 8" adapter?

[Charles Young]

So this weekend I came across a good deal on a Meade SCT 8" telescope. It does have some good imaging of the moon and planets. I would like to see what they look like on the big screen. Anyone have any ideas for adapting the EX1 to a 1.25" telescope eyepiece?

[Alister Chapman]

Yikes!

It can be done, but don't expect anything great. A much better way to get images of the planets is to use a webcam with a 1.25" webcam adapter (try googling it). The old Phillips 2UCam which has a removable lens used to be the webcam of choice. The next best alternative is to use a DSLR with a direct adapter that eliminates the DSLR lens, but any planets will be tiny in the frame, although the moon will be very good. DSLR's can also be used for deep space imaging of distant galaxies by using multiple long exposures, provided you have a polar mount with accurate tracking.

Trying to support the bulk of an EX on the end of an eyepiece is going to be very difficult and far from ideal. You'll have to use an eyepiece and then shoot the image through the eyepiece. It will be small and dark and low resolution with lots of aberrations.

It can be a very expensive thing to get into. I used to have a 12" SCT for planetary imaging and an 8" Auto-guided f6 Newtonian for deep space. SCT's are slow, typically f12 so best suited to bright planetary imaging. For deep space a faster scope is better as your dealing with extremely faint objects and using stacked exposures of many minutes, sometimes as many as 100 exposures each 10 mins each taken over several weeks!!

The Saturn picture attached was taken with the Meade and a webcam, the others with the Newtonian and a DSLR.

[Charles Young]

Thanks Alister. I will be looking into the webcam adapter. I have a DSLR adapter on the way, I will probably makeshift a mount for my HV20 with the ?DSLR adapter just to say I have tried it.

Nice pictures!

[Dustin Moore]

Your life will be much easier if you use a camera that has a removable lens. If you
take the eyepiece out of the telescope and the lens off the camera and just make
the telescope focus on the imager in the camera, you will have a much easier time
in life. Eyepieces projection or whatever is not fun.

You might consider an NEX-3 or NEX-5 or a regular DLSR with appropriate mount to adapt to your
telescope<->DLSR adapter. The HV20 is probably a recipe for extreme pain.

[Luc De Wandel]

Beautiful shots, Alister. They make me feel even more sorry that there's so much light pollution over here (Zeebrugge harbour).

[Alister Chapman]

I live in a very heavily light polluted area and it's why I no longer have any scopes (although I'm thinking of getting a small refractor). I used to use some optical filters that remove the orange light emitted by sodium street lamps and this was a big help, plus a lot of work in photoshop!

Charles: as Dustin say's don't waste time and effort on eyepiece projection. It will be disappointing and frustrating. Wait till you get your DSLR adapter. If you can you should also get the matching f6.3 focal reducer for the SCT otherwise the image won't fill the frame and will have a lot of "coma" errors. Also learn how to collimate it as this will make a dramatic difference to the quality of your images. Errr.... I think were way off topic - thread - forum !!!!

[Charles Young]

I do understand about being able to remove the lens but dbout I will be buying an EX3 to replace my EX1. After a few hours of research I am thinking more along the lines of using a webcam.

Anyone with experience using a hires webcam? suggestions?

[Dustin Moore]

The industry standard for this purpose is probably the Meade DSI II Color.
You can find them for much less than the cost of an EX1 or a HV20. They
plug into a laptop and take long exposures. Great tool for beginning
astrophotography. Will do long exposures too but you need to have
tracking and polar alignment setup on your scope. You probably won't be
able to do what Alister did without tracking and polar alignment.

A modern (circa last two years) DLSR like the NEX-3 will have more resolution,
much larger field of view and can get the same exposure in less time but it will
cost another $150 or so assuming you buy used body only. You might be able
to get interesting results without tracking and polar alignment using the
various night-shot modes on the NEX.

[Alister Chapman]

Ditto the DSI II or a used DSI I to get started unless you already own a DSLR. The old Canon 350D (original Digital Rebel) was always good, especially if you removed the IR filter. But for any serious work a good polar mount and tracking/autoguiding are essential and suddenly it all becomes a lot more complicated.

[Charles Young]

I do have the polar part but not the Right Asention drive. Probably will locate a RA drive tomarow.