Nikon SLR Cameras

Fitting a FZ150 to a telescope?

Rufus
Rufus

I'd like to start doing Astrophotography down my Celestron 114eq.
I have a Panasonic DMC-FZ150 and have been taking some photos of space objects, however I'd like to start taking photos down the scope.

Because the lens can't be taken out of the camera this causes a issue, I see things like this
http://www.amazon.co.uk/...004W7UBEW/
and don't know if this is what i'm looking for.

As far as I understand I need something called a t-adapter, and i'm not sure if that's it. Can someone please run me through all the necessary components to attach a camera to a scope?

(If my camera is not adequate for this I can use my dads nikon, it lets you take the lens out but he may be selling it soon so I'd rather not spend money on something I may not have for long. I also have a webcam, but I'd rather get high quality pictures)

Added (1). Thanks geoffg, that is one way of looking at it I have not considered before. What if I just wanted to use it to take short exposure photography of say, Jupiter?

GeoffG
GeoffG

A fixed-lens camera is not really suitable for astrophotography through a telescope. A telescope used for astrophotography is really used as a lens for the camera, so having a fixed lens on the camera really gets in the way. You have to use a regular telescope eyepiece between the camera lens and the objective of the telescope, so you end up with more than a dozen pieces of glass in the optical path, which leads to difficulties in collimation and vignetting.

The normal way of using a telescope for astrophotography is like this:

Camera t-ring focuser tube objective

With a fixed lens camera, you have:

Camera lens? Eyepiece focuser tube objective

The? Represents some way of coupling the camera lens to the telescope eyepiece.

A typical camera lens has 6 to 8 elements, and a typical telescope eyepiece has 4 to 6 elements, so you're looking at 10 to 14 extra pieces of glass in the train, which can't be good!

A t-adapter is an adapter tube used between an interchangeable lens camera and a telescope drawtube (no eyepiece in place), which is not what you want here. The Maxsima tube connects your lens to a filter or supplementary lens, but really provides no way of coupling to a telescope eyepiece. Telescope eyepieces come in many different sizes, and have no thread or other standardized coupling on them.

There are various mechanical devices which purport to connect a camera lens to a telescope eyepiece, but I've heard that they tend to make wobbly connections, making it impossible to accurately align the exit pupil of the telescope with the diaphargm of the camera lens.

Sorry, but this is just not the route to take. A DSLR or a dedicated CCD astro camera is the route.

Thomas
Thomas

When it comes to the planets, chances are your webcam will get high quality pictures. Take the lens off and attach some sort of nosepiece to fit into your telescope's focuser. Then you want to take video, since thats lots of pictures one after another.

Then specialist software such as Registax can combine the best frames from the video to make a final image more detailed than any single frame. That's the tricky bit.