Moon Camera

With a lunar eclipse due on the 3rd March 2007 I was wondering how I’d get the whole moon in a single frame without having to buy a focal reducer, which it seems may not work with the newtonian scope. I decided to see if I could mount a 200mm Minolta zoom lens (£10 off ebay!) onto the ICE CM2xUTP camera. The camera has a screw mount that fits a standard camera tripod and if I could firmly attach the lens I should be able to keep everything pointing skywards without worrying about pieces falling off.

An adapter is available to connect a c-mount to a Minolta MC mount, but in order to keep the costs down I set about the lens with some small screwdrivers and managed to remove the mount which left an inner tube with a 29mm internal diameter which is threaded and tapers.It just so happens that my 2x barlow fitted nicely into the end of the tube, only a milimeter or so but enough to test if it worked. The barlow then gave a convenient socket into which the camera could be inserted.

A little electricians tape secured the barlow to the lens and I later added a hose clamp to make the joint more secure. Some tests through the window showed that I could focus on distant objects so the whole lot made its way onto the patio that evening for a moon test. Stars were too faint to pick out but the moon filled my screen however the image was not the best with the square pixels clearly visible.

When it was time to film the eclipse I decided to go with the trusty 1004x instead of the ICE CM2XUTP and taped the whole assembly to the top of the tripod. I regretted the descision when at full eclipse the moon appeared to shimmer and turn a deep red colour and I was left with a mono camera. I’ll put the images onto the solar system page when I get a minute, but they’re not very good as the lens wasn’t lined up correctly with the CCD so not even registax could salvage anything decent from the 130+ videos that I took that evening.