SkyWatcher Explorer 130M with Canon EOS (Take 2)

I borrowed a Canon EOS 1000D for the weekend, and was lucky to get some clear sky both on Friday and again tonight (Sunday). On Friday I was mostly working out focus travel issues, what modifications might be needed, and how to get any heavenly bodies in focus. Tonight I tried a planet, the moon, and some stars.


Once again I used the Canon DSLR with the slim line T-Ring resting on the SkyWatcher's 40mm silver focuser thread (exposed by removing the large black eye-piece holder). I was lucky tonight in that the Moon, Jupiter and Orion were all at about the same elevation, at an angle which gave me a surprisingly stable hands free shooting opportunity:

Jupiter (and moons), over exposed and wobbly (when zoom in),
Canon EOS 1000D, single exposure, no cropping, no editing,
prime-focus with SkyWatcher Explorer 130M telescope (SK1309EQ2).

While trying the lunar photos, the wobble from pressing the shutter was easier to see - so I took advantage of using the 10s delay option to allow the telescope to settle (if I buy one of these Canon EOS cameras, getting a remote shutter cable seems a good idea). This combined with the fact I wasn't having to hold the camera seemed to work much better:

Half moon.
Canon EOS 1000D, single exposure, no cropping, no editing,
prime-focus with SkyWatcher Explorer 130M telescope (SK1309EQ2).

Finally I tried the Orion Nebula (M42) at the tip of Orion's dagger - not a long enough exposure to capture anything other than the main stars, but a pleasing result. When you zoom in there is vertical smearing of the starts (also seen in the Jupiter shot) where I can't have done my polar alignment very well, or perhaps hadn't tightened the clutches enough while photographing.

Orion nebula (M42).
Canon EOS 1000D, single exposure,
no cropping, no editing, prime-focus with
SkyWatcher Explorer 130M telescope.

Orion nebula (M42).
Canon EOS 1000D, single exposure,
no cropping, brightness adjustment only.
Annotated by hand, with rough compass added.

I found these results very encouraging - for a start, other than looking up how to turn on live view in the manual, and turning on the 10s timer delay, these are all 'point-and-shoot' default settings. Also, for DSLR astrophotography there is an incentive to perfect my polar alignment so that my RA motor can counteract the Earth's rotation.

Update (30 March 2012):

I brought myself a second hand Canon EOS 1000D on eBay, worked out how to install the Canon EOS Utility software on Mac OS X, and will try more astrophotography once it stops snowing.

Update:

I moved the telescope mirror to allow focusing with the DSLR mounted directly on the telescope.