The Moon
If you don't know what the moon is, you need to get out more. It is that bright thing you see in the night sky every so often. One of our favorite things is shooting the moon - that is taking pictures of the moon.
The moon is a relatively easy subject for photography. All you need is a camera with a long focal length lens and a steady platform like a tripod. A telescope and other accessories bring in even more options for lunar photography. That's the fun of shooting the moon, you can use a wide range of equipment and get a lot of different results!
The image samples are from our rather large collection of lunar pictures. The equipment ranges from a zoom lens with a camera on a tripod to a Celestron 14" with a small CCD. Using a zoom lens shows the lunar maria (seas) and some of the largest craters. Add a telescope and the craters become even more numerous and couple a CCD at higher magnification and you can see lots of details.
Zoom lens on a Tripod
You do not need a lot of fancy equipment to start taking pictures of the moon.
The moon is a bright object and provides interesting images at all focal lengths. Mounting a camera on a tripod or a steady mount is all that is required. A 50 mm lens will produce a small image and it is recommended that a zoom lens be employed for the best results.
The size of the lunar image on a piece of film is determined by a simple equation. To find how many millimeters in size that the lunar image will show on a standard 35 mm film is simple. Divide the focal length of the lens by 100. A 200 mm lens will result in an image that is 2 mm in size. 35 mm film is about 25 mm from top to bottom.
Using a Telescope
There are three basic approaches one can take when attaching a camera to a telescope. The moon allows you to try them all out if you have the right equipment.
Prime Focus - sometimes called rear cell. The camera body is attached to the telescope directly so that the telescope acts as the lens for the camera. A T-adapter is needed for most cameras.
Negative Projection - using a Barlow lens, attach the T-adapter to the camera. This will produce a magnified image when compared to the prime focus approach.
Afocal Projection - sometimes called eyepiece projection because it uses a regular eyepiece and the camera with the lens attached. Set the camera to an infinite focus and point it down the eyepiece. Move back and forth until you get as much of the image in the view as you can. The resulting image size will vary based on the eyepiece used.
The best thing is to use a digital camera (where you can see the results immediately) and try a variety of exposures until you get one right. Then try some more! Star party on dude!