I’m a photographer, born and bred. Well, almost. I took it up in school, dabbled with film making, got a degree in scientific photography and, after working in the field for a while moved on to training (where I spent a lot of time writing and directing training videos). So I know how to take a picture.

Except I don’t any more. For the last few clear nights, the cat (she doesn’t have a name that I know) and I have been out trying to take photos of the things I’ve been looking at through the eyepiece. I’ve digiscoped before using a pair of binoculars and either a cheap webcam or a compact digital camera. So I thought it would be easy. Hold the camera to the eyepiece, focus on infinity and if I can see an image, snap away. I bracketed the exposures and banged off a load of snaps. The Pleiades, Orion’s nebula, (I didn’t hold out much hope for these as I knew they would be too feint), Mars and Saturn.

After everything was packed away, I downloaded the files onto the PC and had a look. On most of them there was nothing. I found the Martian ones – little blobs of slightly pink fuzz. Saturn was slightly better but only because I could tell where the rings were but there was no question of it being shown to anyone. I was disappointed to say the least.

The next night I went out and tried holding the camera in place with a second tripod to allow longer exposures, using the self-timer to trigger the shutter and minimise shake. Setting up the camera and tripod took almost as long as aligning the telescope. I took loads of shots of Mars and Saturn and this time, the Beehive Cluster (M44). On the PC, there was next to nothing for the stars and the usual fuzzy blobs (some with ears) for the planets. Now I was frustrated.

Then a couple of nights ago, the moon was out. It would be the first time I’d observed the moon and I spent a long time with my eye to the eyepiece, marvelling at the contrasty image before me. Someone said on SGL that it was almost as if you could leave footprints in the lunar dust. It felt that clear and close.

So I decided to try taking photos of it. I tried a few digiscope style pictures then I attached my digital SLR directly to the back of the telescope. I was pleased that I even remembered to adjust the balance of the telescope on the mount. I focussed using the live view function on the camera and snapped away. This time I was very pleased with the results on the PC. I also took some long exposure shots of the Pleiades, which came out really well, with no discernible smearing.

The cat must have got bored sometime during my marathon photography session. She was no where to be seen when I packed up for the night.