telescopes?

[RedDevilUK]

i know a few people use adapters to connect their DSLR to a telescope for extra magnification etc... especialy when looking at stars.

i would like more info on this please, i am interested in connecting my D80 to a telescope to view planets and hopefully get some shots, what would i need?

 

[Steph]

Have a look here. They sell a wide range of adapters to mount cameras on telescopes and briefly explain a few technics for astropphotography. Hope that helps.

 

[RedDevilUK]

they have these on ebay... and look OK but they dont fit the D80 i dont think

 

[fmw]

The D80 is a poor choice for astrophotography. The reason is that it needs a cpu lens (auto focus) in order to boot up. The camera simply won't work without it. There may be a telescope adapter with a cpu in it made specifically for that camera but I wouldn't hold my breath.

 

[RedDevilUK]

i was hoping there was an adapter that fits on the end of one of my current lenses, i see some that fit compact cameras but not SLR

 

[fmw]

The problem is not SLR. The problem is D80. Wrong camera for the application. Sorry.

 

[GreenSlime89]

Would a 20D work for that though? I may want to try that out...

 

[RedDevilUK]

i now believe the way to go is with 2 T-mounts

one for the D80 and then one for the telescope, so im told

 

[astrostu]

With a normal (D)SLR, you need a t-mount and a t-ring. The t-mount is specific to the telescope -- it fits the barrel where the eyepiece would go and is generally either 2" or 1.25". The part that sticks out is threaded and will connect to the t-ring. The t-ring on one end will fit the threads, and the other end is specific to your camera so that it will mount like a normal camera lens.

I know nothing about how the D80 works, so I can't comment on that, but I will tell you that planet photography through a telescope is the wrong application of wrong equipment. Planets are faint, small, and they are easily distorted by atmospheric turbulence so you need to take very short images (<1/15 sec) but you need a lot of them because they're faint. The best planet photographs these days that come from the ground are by amateurs who use modified webcams that are hooked up to the telescope. They take movies of the planet for many seconds and then average all the good frames together. So a final image will be the average of anywhere from 100 to 10,000 individual images so as to get rid of atmospheric distortion.