Where to start with imaging?

[JamesF]

Magnification is a bit misleading from an imaging point of view. It helps to think more of "image scale" -- basically how much of the sky is covered by how much space on the camera sensor. The same rules apply for the use of barlows though. If you add a 2x barlow then you'll increase the dimensions of the image by a factor of two as well. However, you'll also spread the same amount of light out over four times the area and at some point you reach a limit where the camera sensor just can't create a useful image because there's not enough light landing on each pixel.

That said, barlows are heavily used in imaging and the rules of thumb for visual observing don't apply. I regularly use a combination of barlow and spacer to get an increase in image scale of around 3.3x (an effective focal length of close to 5000mm) for planetary imaging, so there's absolutely no reason you shouldn't experiment with adding a barlow if the seeing will stand it.

James

[JamesF]

Thanks. I'm keeping a close eye out for an spc900. Are the toucams the same?

Some of the Toucams, but not all I believe. Of the top of my head I can't recall which is which I'm afraid.

James

[NickK]

I had my first go with my scope and took these by simply holding my iPhone camera upto the lens and taking the pics. I've played around with the brightness and contrast in photoshop and here are the results. They suffer a lot from glare which removed a lot of the detail. In fact most of the moon one is just a white washout. I am unsure wether a moon filter will solve this problem or whether its the iphone camera. Jupiter also looked much better when looking through the scope. I could see the bands quite nicely but they do not appear on the photos.

This is exactly how I started.. with the VIxen A80Mf, baader EP and my iPhone 3GS.. you can get adaptors now for EP->iPhone.