Shoot to Thrill

 Seeing Scoops astrophotography the other day made me want to post some of my own. Its a regular event for me to get the camera out and sit in garden stargazing. I have to say it is tremendously difficult to get a decent shot, especially as I only use vintage analogue lenses for this kind of thing. My favourite lens must be my Maksutov  russian catadioptric lens. Originally intended for military use, it is essentially a small telescope with a 500mm lens. The light is bounced around inside the lens, by twin mirrors, like a reflecting telescope to give huge magnification with a length of about 8". Its immensely heavy and built like a tank, but has a fixed apeture of F8.5. It does have beautiful resolving power and gives a shimmering, ghostly image.

This evening, I nipped out with the MTO-500 and another long lens, the Praotor 500. This is a standard telephoto, at 500mm, but the barrel is about 18" long! This was a cheap buy from a car boot sale for £3 ans is again quite powerful, but lacking the sharpness of the russian. The problem with manually focussing, is that the slightest touch of the lens, or even the tripod, sends the image bouncing away in the viewfinder, so finding the sweet spot is a nightmare. In extreme magnification like this, it pays to be set up quickly as you can see the moon wandering away in the viewfinder!

As I said, I regularly pop out on a clear night, especially in Summer to photograph a bright moon and occasionally am rewarded with a good shot, such as this total coincidence, as a passenger jet flew across the lunar disc as I was setting up. Luckily I managed to get three shots before it passed, one of which was useable.

 Another great opportunity was the recent lunar eclipse, which turned the lunar disk an eerie pinkish red.