Celestron AstroMaster EZ 70
So tonight we were checking out the Moon and i grabbed the 5 megapixel digital and held it up against the lens on the telescope and got some nice shots of the Moon and it's topography.
Soon as i get the images on my PC i will share them with you guys.
Pretty neato!

Here they are. - Kind of hard to get a clear shot because the moon is always moving.Hence the reason we decided to go with the EQ mount instead of an AZ. The EQ is easier to follow the motion of the objects.You can get a nice clear view of the Moon for about 10-12 seconds and then its out of view.That's how fast it moves.

Cool

Wow - beautiful pictures. You'll have to try Jupiter next.

I thought you bought it for your wife?

wow rod very cool

Yeah, I was going to ask that. Maybe she has to make an appointment to use it.

Thanks folks.
It is quite the fun toy to play with.
Jupiter, and it's moons are next on the list of observance.I was able to sight in Venus but could only see the purple aura around it.Better lens's must get better lens's.
We are already discussing more lens's.
I will try and get some nice clear shots (of the craters) on the next clear night.Tonight is kind of cloudy so i will have to wait.
The trick is keeping the azimuth as you take the shot.Otherwise motion blur occurs.
Actually i didn't think it would work.Placing the camera lens up to the Telescope lens like that.

Saturn is beautiful too. I've seen Jupiter and Saturn through my mate's telescope when we were teenagers. He's now upgraded to a quite powerful reflector - I haven't seen that one in action yet!

Here are some clearer shots my Wife and i got tonight.We took 74 pictures.







We were trying to figure out what this bright spot was on the surface.
Possibly a sunlight reflection of something we left on the surface? I could discount my lens having debris on it as i could see the reflection with my 20x binoculars also. The bright spot is circled in this image.

Always wanted a telescope with camera port for taking pictures. The moon captures look pretty good considering all the issues that I know you have to deal with taking these Rod. Thanks for sharing some of your exploits with your wife's new toy.

@Rod:

Some very nice pictures! As you noticed, one can really get some decent results with very simple means. The moon is a thankful target.

A normal recommendation to amateur astronomers is to connect a webcam to your telescope - there are telescope adapters available for mounting such (at the moment I don't know what works with what though). What you then do is that you take a "movie" of the target (i.e. many brief exposures, saved separately). In the computer you next stack/add these up and used the extra information between the images in order to get an optimally sharp image. This is in principle how professionals do it. I couldn't recommend any particularly useful program for amateurs (SAOImage DS9 is a common one used by some observers I know), not sure how good a job GIMP can do at this stage, but one could certainly use it for post-processing of eventually filtered images.

The bright spot you see looks like Aristarchus, it's a giant impact crater (about 30-40 km across). The ejecta from the impact is whiter than the surroundings and catch the sunlight.
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Griatch (who is an astronomer, although not primarily an observer)

Thanks for the info Griatch.

Lot's of discussion at DPR's retouch forum on that topic Griatch. I wonder if there is an image stacking optimization plugin/script-fu for GIMP? It not only sharpens, as you say, but also reduces noise from the samples I saw folk share over there.

Nice Rod
Does it have to be a camera with a small lens to be able to use it with a telescope? I'd like to try my Kodak Z981
took this yesterday around 6:30 eastern

That is cool alc.

I used a DXG 556 HD 5mp Slim.It has a lens that is rounded and protrudes a bit.


Then i have the flip viewer screen i look through.

I am able to set that rounded camera lens inside the telescope lens and fiddle with the focus, azimuth, and altitude until it looks pretty clear.

If there isn't one it doesn't seem like it would be hard to write.
Doesn't stacking just require a certain layer mode on each image and varying capacities for each image layer?