First light for Galileoscope

Ok, so I said in my last post I was going to wait for something to mount the Galileoscope on before attempting to take an image with it. But last night turned clear unexpectedly and the full moon issued the challenge: Can you fit me on a chip?

Yes, I can. Connecting the camera to the Galileoscope was straightforward. Taking an image hand-held is a trifle more challenging, basically the only way to do this is to start recording video and then pointing the tube at the object until you get enough frames that contain the object (of course, this only works for bright objects where exposure times are very short).

However, even with the reduced pixel scale of the Galileoscope my chip was to tiny to fit the image of the full moon. A 0.5x focal reducer was needed, but this turned out to require more inward focus travel than the scope was ready to give willingly. So I had to make do with unwillingly:

I NEVER run out of inward focus travel

I NEVER run out of inward focus travel

The advantage of having a cheap telescope with a flexible plastic tube assembled from a kit becomes apparent: Easy to partially disassemble and bend to your will.