[The Kids Telescope] [1] [2] Last month The Kids received a telescope from their father. I helped The Kids to set it up (read: I put it together) and use it to view the moon and what I think was Jupiter. It's too nice to let them keep it in their room, so it currently lives in our room.
Late Sunday night, I was talking with my friend Ken D, who just received his Ph.D. in physics from FAU (Florida Atlantic University) [3] and currently teaches an astronomy class and he pointed out that the bright star south west of the moon was most likely Saturn, so when I got home, I decided to break out the telescope and do a bit of viewing.
Or rather, an attempt at stellar photography. Or would that be, planetary photography?
Anyway, I set up the telescope (which has a computerized controller which makes fine adjustments quite nice) and then attempted to use my digital camera to take pictures, first of the moon.
[Moooooooooon!] [4] [5] Considering I have no camera mount for the telescope, I think I managed to get some decent photographs of the moon through the telescope. Not an easy task to line up the camera optics with the telescope optics and take a picture without the image becoming hopelessly blurry. Even with a tripod it was difficult since the moon was so high up that the camera would just barely reach the eyepiece if I tipped the camera tripod up on two feet—in retrospect, I should have lowered the telescope, but hey, it was a learning experience.
I spent so much time with the moon that by the time I got around to Saturn it was just above a strand of trees and setting fast. At least, I think it was Saturn—it was a planet (since I could make out a distinct disk) but the rings were very hard to see, if in fact they were rings and not a form of spherical abberation due to the telescope optics. Twice I moved the telescope and lowered it in a vain attempt to get a picture of Saturn, but to no avail—it had set behind the trees and the one shot I did get was a light blob, not worth saving.
[1] /boston/2004/04/05/thumb.telescope.jpg
[2] /boston/2004/04/05/telescope.jpg
[4] /boston/2004/04/05/thumb.moon.jpg
![[1] /boston/2004/04/05/thumb.telescope.jpg](/gemini.conman.org/boston/2004/04/05/thumb.telescope.jpg){kind=link}
![[2] /boston/2004/04/05/telescope.jpg](/gemini.conman.org/boston/2004/04/05/telescope.jpg){kind=link}
![[4] /boston/2004/04/05/thumb.moon.jpg](/gemini.conman.org/boston/2004/04/05/thumb.moon.jpg){kind=link}
![[5] /boston/2004/04/05/moon.jpg](/gemini.conman.org/boston/2004/04/05/moon.jpg){kind=link}