Re: Minutes of September 30, 2023 Physics Theorynet Meeting

[Ken Olum <kdo cosmos phy tufts edu>]

Hi, Mike.  Glad you got it working!

For photographing planets, your best bet is an adapter that will hold
your camera in front of the eyepiece.  This is called "eyepiece
projection".  I haven't done it and I don't know exactly what you need.
Obviously it is different if you have a cellphone vs. an actual camera.

For photographing larger objects such as galaxies, instead of using an
eyepiece you can put your camera at the focus of the telescope.  This is
called "prime focus" photography.  We have the telescope part for that:
it is the small tube with a ring and a printed label saying what it is
for.  Then you need the part to connect your camera to this tube, which
I believe is called a "T adapter".  This adapter would go in place of a
lens on a camera with replaceable lenses.  So the telescope is focusing
the image directly onto the sensor of the camera.

I don't know if there's a way to do something like this with a phone.
Maybe not.  It would only work if you could get your phone to work
essentially like the telescope eyepiece, and thus to focus on something
(the focal plane of the telescope) only a few centimeters away.

                                        Ken