Need help with D5100 / ETX-60 telescope set up.

ABN Panzer

Senior Member
I've seen a few posts of others wanting to hook their camera to their telescope.
This led me to a few questions and searching the net only added to some of the confusion.

I own a Meade EXT-60 telescope (have had for about 10 years)
Also own a D5100.

1) Can anyone assist in telling me what I would need to connect the two?
2) Are there any real benefits to do this given I have the 55-300mm lense for the 5100?
 

Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
I've seen a few posts of others wanting to hook their camera to their telescope.
This led me to a few questions and searching the net only added to some of the confusion.

I own a Meade EXT-60 telescope (have had for about 10 years)
Also own a D5100.

1) Can anyone assist in telling me what I would need to connect the two?
2) Are there any real benefits to do this given I have the 55-300mm lense for the 5100?
Does your Meade have a standard 1.25" diameter eye piece?

If so you can use this telescope adapter kit. Amazon was just one easy source, lots of places sell these adapter kits. Google'ing will turn up plenty of hits.
 

AC016

Senior Member
I see it has a focal length of 350mm. 50mm more that what you have now. The adapter kit that Horoscope mentioned is $80. I don't think it is worth $80 when you can crop your pictures for free. What exaclty where you thinking of taking pictures of?
 

ABN Panzer

Senior Member
Thanks for the replies.

In all honesty I hadnt given much thought to what I wanted to take photos of other than Astronomy. Wasnt sure if there was any benefit over the 300mm of my 55-300.

Given the telescope, and different barlow lenses, it reaches out enough to see the larger moons of Jupiter (although small). Knew I wouldnt get that type of magnification but couldn't find a site that clearly explained/demonstrated what could be expected.
 

m4ilm4n

Senior Member
Unless you have an equatorial wedge for the mount, don't expect much at all beyond the moon. The camera needs to track the object by moving along the plane of the ecliptic (fancy way of saying it needs to cancel out the earth's rotation) because to capture faint images you'll need very long exposure times (the best I've been able to do without star trails is about thirty seconds of exposure; some astrophotographers can do upwards of 60 minutes).

The best I've been able to do (and this was nine years ago with an 8" reflector):
saturn04152004b1.jpg
 

ABN Panzer

Senior Member
Would the wedge be similar to the telescope's tracking? The etx-60 has an onboard computer and once 'locked' to the object will track it.

Once the weather breaks I will need to bring it back out to see how well it tracks. May be a bit too much vibration for the camera.

Nice shot!
 

m4ilm4n

Senior Member
If it's the stock mount with an ETX-60, you can track but the problem is field rotation. However, you can still do some neat shots with short exposures - anywhere from 1 to 10 seconds, then stack the images with something like RegiStax -
 
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