This year I bought my first telescope, it's a Celestron Nexstar 4SE. I couldn't be happier with it, the optics are fantastic and give great views of the Moon and Planets. On clear nights with good seeing, I've had some fantastic views of Saturn and Jupiter, and The Moon looks truly amazing.
I've also started a bit of amateur astrophotography. It's nothing fancy, at the moment I'm just holding my camera up to the eyepiece, relying on a steady hand, and a lot of patience. But, like most amateur astronomers who catch the astrophotography bug, I'm already saving the pennies to upgrade. I'm looking at new scopes with more aperture, new mounts, and a dedicated camera that's designed for astrophotography. But as the next step I'll probably buy a dedicated camera, maybe a Nex-Image or if I'm feeling flush one from Image Source.
These are the best shots I've taken so far, they may be a bit blurred, but my memory of taking them isn't.
The moon photo below is composed of 20 shots taken through a 7mm eyepiece, and the photo of Jupiter is made up of a series of stacked frames from an mpeg video taken with my camera. The frames were taken through the same 7mm eyepiece and stacked using Keith's Image Stacker. The red spot is clearly visible in the southern equatorial band, but it's more of a Salmon colour at the moment.Practice makes perfect. I've built a gadget to hold my camera directly on the eyepiece, the camera is still the same point and click Lumix TZ-3, but the results are much better.
