Astrophoto (don't laugh)

[TopHouse]

After having a really good play tonight and loving my new SW Panaview 32 even more, i took my completely unsuitable Finepix S5600 and focussed the scope up on Pliedes, I was ready for packing up and had taken the battery pack inside so it wasn't tracking, I simply 'held' the camera to the eyepiece, had it set at manual and gave it a longish shutter speed and this is what i got, this is the actual image, no photoshopping or anything :-

[TopHouse]

I thought I caught the doughnut nebula particularly well.

[JonH]

I'm not laughing, it's the best shot of the doughnut nebula I've ever seen.

[Space Bat]

Fantastic !!!

Very few can say they have captured the doughnut nebula - very tricky, well done

Chris

[TopHouse]

Joking aside, what is it that's caused me to get the primary mirror on the shot like that?

[GazOC]

I THINK the secondary (the centre spot) is showing because you used a very low power eyepiece and the background sky wasn't darkened by the magnification enough to hide the secondary.

Is the other outer "circle" just caused by vignetting by a camera adaptor thats cutting off light to the outer part of the image?

[TopHouse]

I see it as it being the primary with the shadow of the secondary in the middle, hang on, did a longer exposure that shows it better, will upload in a mo if i can find it.

[TopHouse]

Here we go :-

[GazOC]

I don't image so take this with a pile of salt;) but in the first picture you seem to have stars showing that are outside the "primary" mirror, that would seem like some sort of vignetting to me rather than you just having taken a picture of the primary?