I spent Saturday night at the observatory first sweeping up –dead ants everywhere– and then experimenting with the 9-inch telescope. Three local high school students saw that the front door was open and stopped by for a visit. I spoke with them a bit about the observatory and telescope, gave them a look at the Moon, and sent them on their way — this was not a scheduled open night! The Moon was big and bright and, unfortunately, was washing out 'most everything else in the sky. My main target for the night was to have been the grand M4 globular star cluster in Scorpius. Couldn't see it… too close to the Moon. So I tried something I'd not experimented with before and hand-held my FinePix digital camera to the ca. 1900 telescope's fist-sized eyepiece and shot some photos. The big eyepiece presents bright, sharp low-magnification views and is my favorite for observing any phase of the Moon. It turns out to be perfect for the "afocal" photographic technique as well! A couple of the images were quite good and I am delighted with them. Converting the images to grayscale seemed to help so that's what I am displaying here. First is the whole, waxing gibbous phase disk… about three days from full. The second image is detail from the full disk shot.
Later I practiced use of the telescope's clock-driven right-ascension (R.A.) clock and indicator. With some effort I was able to find the beautiful galactic pair M81 & M82 in the northern sky; that was the first time I'd been able to find those galaxies with the big scope! The view wasn't so good as the slightly hazy sky was lit up, even that far north, by that old devil Moon, but the success boosted my confidence. I should now be able to more easily find charted objects… I still must master aiming in declination to really locate things! In all, a good night.
PhotonStopper 
Really beautiful photos! Wow! Impressive.
Great shots! Makes me want to go buy a zoom lens.
Hopefully you will some day get to look through the eyepiece yourself. The view is amazing… it even makes the usually boring full Moon interesting and beautiful to look at. — JG
Thanks. I'm very pleased with how these came out. I've seen good results from others holding a relatively simple camera to the eyepiece of a telescope but I'd never done it myself. The huge diameter of the eyepiece made aligning the camera pretty easy and the brightness of the Moon allowed a high shutter speed. Holding the camera perpendicular to the image plane, however, was the trick! — JG
I wonder if a tripod could help with that and get the picture even sharper?
Hi Dan: A tripod might help but, because the Moon appears to move the telescope is also moving. The best way to get good focus and a flat plane is to use an apparatus that, one way or another, mates the camera to the telescope focuser/eyepiece. (One system attaches the camera lens to the eyepiece — not good for all-in-one cameras with retracting lenses like the FinePix S7000. Another device clamps on to the telescope on one end and attaches to the camera's tripod socket at the other.) Even with the plane a bit off, this is possibly the best image I've yet made of the Moon. I'm thinking about getting one of those telescope to camera mount rigs, though! –JG
What great images! Really gorgeous detail. And your last reply to Jeff is interesting.