400mm f/6.2 lens and 500mm f/8 mirror lens

After knowing that my wife has had a 500mm f/8 Kalimar lens ever since we met, I never thought about using it until recently!

You see, she and I were both Nikon SLR folks so the lens had a Nikon mount. Since going digital, I now use Canon dSLRs so didn't think that the lens would work. One day, I happened across a Nikon to EOS lens adapter on the web and bought one to use with the Nikkor 50mm f/1.4. That actually works very well. The Nikkor 50mm is a manual focus lens that's built like a tank and looks weird, but works well on my Canon 30D. However, it refused to work with the Kalimar 500mm lens.

Switch to near history and I bought a very inexpensive, but irresistible 400mm refractor lens from my favorite astronomy equipment site: astromart.com. It is a 400mm f/6.3 Vemar lens. I know, I know... what the heck is a Vemar lens? Well, it's a fairly well built, but so far as I can tell, medium to low optical quality lens at a price that I couldn't refuse. $30! It looks quite nice on the 30D.

The Vemar 400mm is a T-thread or T-mount lens and so needed a T-mount adapter. I thought I had one from one of my telescope adapter/lens combinations, but it didn't work. When I went online to look for one, I thought about the Kalimar 500mm f/8! It also seemed to have an interchangeable mount so I ordered two T-mount to Canon lens adapters. When they arrived, one went on the Vemar and one went on the Kalimar. The Kalimar is very compact and also looks good mounted to my 30D.

I've only had them out one night to shoot the moon and the results are mixed so far. I need to pixel-peep and tweak the photos that I took with these lenses.

More soon and clear skies!
Ambrose

Craigslist Pickup... Celestron Astromaster 114EQ

I was checking out Criagslist in my area and saw a used Celestron Astromaster 114EQ scope for sale. This is a relatively inexpensive scope ~$150 new and with all of the original contents intact except for the box. I looked it over and it was indeed very clean. I grabbed it for a song and look forward to using it soon.

The CAM114EQ is a solidly built (although mostly plastic OTA) and basic scope. The key things that drew me to it were the very solid legs of the tripod. It uses solid stainless steel tubes for the legs instead of the much more common hollow aluminum extrusion legs on most cheaper scopes. It also has a focal length of 1000mm which is good since it doesn't duplicate my Coulter Odyssey's focal length of 1,500mm. The shorter focal length should give me a wider view of the sky and include some peripheral stars to the moon if I so wish. When used with my APS-C sized sensor in my Canon 30D, it should give me a nice 1,600mm focal length. With my Coulter Odyssey, the combination yields 2,400mm.

The much smaller size of this scope should allow me to use it as a grab and go scope as well as a nice vacation scope. The Coulter is just too large to take on vacation!

Anyway, here's the link to the Celestron site with information on the Astromaster 114EQ.

http://goo.gl/6JD1q
or
http://www.telescopes.com/telescopes/reflecting-telescopes/celestronastromaster114eqreflector.cfm

Full Lunar Eclipse of 12-21-10

I was able to get out that night and luckily, the skies were clear for us here in the DC area. It was indeed cold though. I am a bit out of practice but I did get this nice shot of the moon during the total eclipse portion.

It wasn't as bright red as the last full lunar eclipse, but it certainly looked gorgeous!

More later,
Ambrose

Haunting moon!

We were out on the Eastern shore last weekend and we happened upon a beautiful full moon with wispy feathery clouds surrounding it. I took this very quck show hand-held. I did lean against a tree for some extra support.

Ambrose

Another Perseid Meteor

Just got back from my vacation in Maine near Biddeford Pool and had 2 wonderful nights of perfectly clear skies in a very dark spot to see the Perseid Meteor Shower. I didn't bring any of my equipment, but I did have my Canon 30D and my 17-85mm zoom lens. I turned off the autofocus and the image stabilization, flipped the camera so that it pointed straight up, set it down on a relatively flat rock with a paper towel to protect the LCD screen and set the exposure for 30 seconds, F5.6. This is the best shot of the 150 or so shots I took that night. I wish I had a wider angle lens since so many of the meteors were just out of frame. I also wished that I had my remote control and tripod and Canon angle finder to help me focus. Ah well, it was fun, "roughing it."

Here's the shot.

I'm back!

After many months of non-activity, I've decided to get back into lunar photography in a big (or littler) way. I've just jumped on the Astro-Tech 6" f/9 Ritchey-Chrétien astrograph deal over at Astronomics.com.


Normally, this little jewel goes for $795 and is worth every penny since it has beautiful optics. However, Astronomics.com has them on a special deal (perhaps they are phasing them out) for only $299! At this price, it's an absolute steal. I need to resurrect my old Bogen tripod to try and use that for a while until I can buy a suitable mount for it.

I'm also purchasing another Canon 30D. The previous one I owned had an issue with camera shake when used in continuous shooting mode, only the first shot would be sharp. I sold it to a regular photographer who didn't need the rapid fire capability. I have found another 30D at a great price so will be mating this scope with that camera.


More later,
Ambrose

Hubble 3D

I had a chance to see the Imax presentation called "Hubble 3D" at the Air and Space Museum this past weekend. What an amazing video. The drama of seeing the Space Shuttle blasting off into orbit was amazing! To top it all off, after we came out of the theater, there in front of us stood a life-size replica of the Hubble space telescope! It's amazing to see how large the Hubble is!

Ambrose