Hi,
I'm a beginner at astronomy. About 18 months ago I got a Celestron second hand C8N-GT and I'm very pleased with it. Mostly I look at easy things like the Moon, Jupiter and Saturn and the view through it is simply stunning.
But I want to take some pictures of the things I'm looking at. I've been experimenting with using my Nikon D40 DSLR. The resulting photos are universally awful, the photos are very grainy and either completely black, or blurry, or showing the internal parts of the telescope. Although I do have one shot of the Orion Nebula that I'm quite pleased with.
I've tried various different ways of attaching the camera to the scope. I found the secret to doing prime focus is removing the 1.25inch part of the focuser and screwing the T ring in it's place. I found the secret to doing eyepiece projection is not to push the eyepiece all the way down in the adapter tube, but to leave it up a few millimetres. I can't really see anything through the camera eyepiece. Sometimes I snap dozens of shots, moving the focus a fraction between each one. When trying to focus on Jupiter the other night I could see a white blur that gradually resolved into 5 white pentagons at best focus, I guess that comes from the prism of the camera because when I took the shot, I did get a picture of the planet.
Overall, I'm not enjoying using the D40, it has a very bright screen on the back which destroys my night vision and the moving shutter vibrates the telescope. It's a lot of fiddling about for a poor result. So, to get to the point, I'm wondering whether a dedicated astronomy camera is the solution to my problem? Should I spend some money on a fancy USB camera, or persevere with the Nikon? Will it be easier to get a good result, or am I just going to be substituting one set of problems for another?
Phil.