I have a Canon PowerShot S40 and I have been very happy with it. I haven't used it for any type of astrophotography, but as a general use point and shot, it has given me good service.

I would make one suggestion. Always shot at the highest resolution and with no compression. This takes up more room on the flash card but I thinks it's a good tradeoff. I prefer to have the best image I can get and then do any compression or deresolution on my computer once the images have been downloaded. This is, of course, a personal preference so YMMV.

Have fun!

I like this site http://jonathanclark.com/diary/flare/

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I must not PX. PX is the mind-killer. I will face my PX. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the PX has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

WolfKC excellent page! He explains things a lot more in-depth than I have regarding lens flares.

Anyone who is more curious about how lens flares happen, their various different appearances, etc, check out that page.

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~Brad - Astropaparazzo
http://signaturedigitalimages.com

Comixx,

As someone just getting into astrophotography (check out http://www.websown.com/~jdonahue/astro/astrophoto.htm - hope to have a few more pics scanned soon), I had a couple questions:

I recently decided I was tired of borrowing my parents' Minolta X-700, and, having misplaced my (broken) X-370, I purchased a Minolta Maxxum 5 with the 50mm/f1.7 lens and a x2 teleconverter. So far, I've been pretty happy, and it seems to have worked out pretty well, but I'm kind of in a quandry.

One of the major nuisances I have is that, while that 50mm lens does a pretty good job of gathering light, and I can get good star trail shots, I lack any major magnification, meaning that Mars is still just a dot, the Moon's still relatively small, etc. I also lack any way to track stars across the sky for long exposures, since I'm using a simple pan & tilt tripod.

Back when borrowing the X-700, I picked up a cheap 500mm/f8 catadioptric lens from Ritz, which worked OK (Mars was a small disc, got some great shots of the Pleiades & Orion's belt), but it was pretty difficult to focus and a a bit dark for daytime shots. Besides, I wasn't going to be able to borrow that camera for much longer, so I returned it and ended up getting my Maxxum 5 & 50mm lens instead.

That said, I'm debating between picking up a telescope, or a telephoto lens with a big aperture. Right now, my budget's pretty limited - I could handle $200 without trouble, $300 would be painful, beyond that not really practical at this time.

With a telescope, if you're hooking the camera directly to the scope, do you lose magnification, since there's no eyepiece? IIRC, 42mm is actually 1x magnification for 35mm film, so something like a 900mm focal-length telescope (about my budget) would only give me 21x magnification - is that really enough for decent shots of the planets or the Moon?

On the camera lens side, is there anyone out there who offers a motorized equatorial mount for a camera without a telescope? Or, would I either still need to get a scope I could piggyback the camera on, or resign myself to short-exposure photography only without that mount?

Any advice you have would be welcome. Oh, and BTW, my friend has an Elan 7E and has been pretty happy with it. Kinda funny to see someone else on the board with one, though, admittedly, Canon is assimilating the photography crowd. Resistance, though, is not yet futile. :P

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Sleep? Isn't that that totally inadaquate substitute for caffeine I've heard so much about?

Quantumfoamy.com, my astronomy/astrophotography blog.

The Moon in this photograph is 3" across on a 4x6 print. The magnification was about 36x on a 900mm focal length f7 scope. Your pictures will be a touch larger than half this size at 21x.

Orion EQ-1 Equatorial Mount for scopes = $80
http://www.telescope.com/shopping/pr...iProductID=289

Orion Min-EQ Tabletop Equatorial Mount = $50
http://www.telescope.com/shopping/pr...iProductID=296

Orion EQ-1M Electronic Drive, fits above two tripods = $50
http://www.telescope.com/shopping/pr...iProductID=200

You will need a 1/4"-20 adapter to mount a camera on the EQ-1: Email Orion and ask for a printed catalogue. The mounts are there, but are not currently listed in the online catalogue. Plus the fact that it's so much fun to drool over all them there shiny pictures...

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"If a tree is cut down in the rainforest, and is used to make paper to print a book, and the book is really bad, and there's nobody that will read it, do you still hear a sucking sound?"
Charlie in Dayton, A.AsC.

For christmas I may be getting myself a Canon Digital Rebel, which should take all my existing lenses. =D>

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I must not PX. PX is the mind-killer. I will face my PX. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the PX has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

Because of the small field and magnification of my ccd, I used a Canon digital camera held up to the eyepiece to take my solar pictures(here.

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We've got a five dollar fine, for whining: Chris Ledoux

Excellent OP! Now all we need is one that the Zeta crowd will be comfortable with:

Q: How does a camera work?
A: It's magic. Plus the Zetas imprint thoughts on paper, giving us the illusion we're seeing a picture.

Q: How do photographers get clear pictures of the night sky?
The easiest way is to take a picture of the sun during the daytime, or maybe a street light, and then call that the moon, or Planet X, or whatever. The alternative is to take a disposable camera outside when it's dark, point it vaguely up, and snap a photo. After it's developed, you can call anything that shows up whatever you want.

Q: How does a photographer take a picture through a telescope?
A: Take a lawn chair and jam some binoculars in it, then point your camera sort of through the binoculars and snap a photo. It will be just as good as any other you take.

Q: What causes <insert strange photographic anomaly here>?
A: There are no anomalies. Everything is real. And everything is Planet X. Believe! Believe!

Q: What causes a lens flare?
A: That's the light backscattered from the whirling of the sky dragon reflecting off the dust cloud swirl revolving around the point of balance expressed by the algebra of the Zetas, which a mere human like you cannot understand.

Q: Why is it so hard to take a picture of the moon that shows the Man in the Moon?
A: He's shy. And he's probably moved to his Safe Place.

Q: Do you have to be crazy to be a Planet X photographer?
A: Well, you don't have to be, but you know........

Kudos on the OP!

I was reading one of the threads over there and somebody was claiming the "pinhole method" is just as reliable as a camera because a camera is basically a pinhole. They fear telescopes and cameras.

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We've got a five dollar fine, for whining: Chris Ledoux