Bob wrote in news
I've have a Meade ETX 90 as well as a Nikon D70 with the adapter to
connect the both. I've taken a few moon-shots and my results made me
look this group up and search for advice.

I have lots of questions, many of which I'm sure I'll forget by the
time I'm done with this message.

All of my moon-shots are blurry; my first thought (which might
ultimately be correct) was that the shutter of the camera is causing
everything to move (ever so slightly) and, thus, making it look
blurry. I'm using the standard Meade tripod, which is substantial
IMO, so is it possible that the shutter is causing it? I think I've
only set it for 1 second shutter. I get good light, just blurry
output.

Others have given you good answers but I want to stress something about
your shutter speed here. The full moon filling the field of your camera is
equivalent to a fully sunlit scene on Earth. What do you think you would
get taking one second exposures of a daylight scene on earth? Canopus56
gave you some good advice on how to set the exposure time depending on the
lunar phase.

How would one refer to the Meade ETX 90? I'm guessing that when I see
SCT, it refers to schmidt cassegrain, whereas the ETX is a maksutov
cassegrain. I can look up what the differences are, but is there a

You broke off here. Mak-Cas scopes have a very good optical design and I
believe the little Meade scope is a reasonably good example of the type.
The larger Mak-Cas's have a reputation of being slow to get to thermal
equilibium so need some sort of active cooling system (a fan) to bring them
quickly to ambient temperature, this is important to eliminate thermal
distortions in the image. I really doubt that this is going to be a problem
with a 90mm scope - it doesn't have a huge mass of glass in it that needs
to cool down.



When viewing the moon it's pretty detailed, but the moon is obviously
relatively close. When I was looking at Mars a couple days ago, it
was awfully small; too small for pictures. I have a couple different
eyepieces, 26mm, 18mm and 5mm plus a 2x. The 5mm made it appear
larger, of course, but I couldn't get it to focus very well. Are
there better eyepieces, or am I already at the limit of this
particular scope?

That's pretty normal. Wait till around midnight so that Mars is as high
above the horizon as possible. That will give you the best seeing. Also the
atmosphere does occaisionally settle down to give better views.

Klazmon.



Does anyone else here use a similar setup? Any good hints/tips that
might help me contribute here in the future?

As mentioned in the subject, an FAQ might help as well, if there is
one. Any info is greatly appreciated.

Bob