Astronomy 101

Here is a picture of Saturn taken with a hand held point and shoot through a medium power lens attached.  This is typically what you see using the scope but in a lot more detail than in this hand held shot.

Attending a local astrophotography lecture I was keen to see what I could do to push the limits of a telescope that is not designed for this work and cannot compare to the equipment used for the imaging presented in the lecture. I quickly modified a old webcam to fit my scope.  I will cover this modification in another post.  I then pointed the scope at Saturn and using my old laptop and some very poor quality imaging software which only allows video capture. I got an image of Saturn on the screen.  Due to the fact it is fixed zoom Saturn was moving quickly off the screen and required quick nudges of the scope to keep it in view but I had proven that it could be done.  Further improvements need to be made which I will post later. There is an excellent professional review of my scope at http://www.cloudynights.com/item.php?item_id=489