Crater Copernicus in the Sea of Islands. Ocean of Storms to the north.

I’ve tried in the past to directly connect a modern DSLR camera to the ca. 1901 Warner and Swasey 9-inch telescope I operate for a small college. Because some original fittings have been lost over the decades and I use an eyepiece adapter a predecessor built, the telescope’s couldn’t be used for focal plane camera operation. Focal plane would have been like using the telescope as a 3,200mm telephoto lens. So I was limited to afocal use — holding the camera with one of its own lenses over the telescope eyepiece and trying to record that image. When it worked afocal photography produced very good, even excellent results for the Moon; dim objects could not be handled that way.

Recently it occurred to me that I hadn’t tried eyepiece projection: using a special adapter to hold an eyepiece, connect to the telescope and camera, and project the eyepiece image on to the camera’s image sensor. I scrounged around and found and eyepiece projection adapter in pieces, put it back together and, trying it last night, got interesting results. On this first try with the vintage scope the images all came out in soft focus with details at the center of the image somewhat better than those surrounding it. The overall effect is, I think, quite artistic.

I’ll keep trying with that old scope, with my own new telescope as well, to try and get sharp images but, for now, we have some lovely lunar art!

Crater Tyco, Sea of Clouds to the north.