Lets do Astrophotography NOW! Part 5- Confusion cleared up about T Rings and Adapters.

The confusion of T Adapters and T rings that connect your camera to your telescope.

This is confusing for those starting off in Astrophotography how do I connect my camera to the telescope so lets break it down.

First of all what is a T Ring and what is a T Adapter?

This is a T ring for a Canon 350D SLR camera. You remove the lens and put this on to the camera where the lens would normally go

Next you screw in the T Adapter 

So you end up with this

However when you buy your telescope in my case the Sky watcher 200p you will find that you do not need to buy the T Adapter. Why not I hear you ask?

Because you will get one with your standard fitting for the focuser and eyepiece set.

It looks like this..

You simply unscrew the first section seen between this guys fingers. Then you are left with a short T Adapter that will screw into the T Ring.

Also if you are going to order a Barlow lens for greater magnification be aware that there are two sorts of Barlows.

This what they look like, the first one is a straight Barlow lens but look closely at the second one,the deluxe Barlow lens, ohhhh.. its deluxe.

You can see it has a thread on it.

This will fit straight on to your T Ring, meaning you can then put the camera T ring and Barlow together and then shove it in your telescope. Great for taking pictures of the moon.

So if you have got a sky watcher 200p on order and want to get set up to use your SLR with it, get yourself a T ring for your camera and order a deluxe Barlow lens with the thread on it and you will be good to go.

One word of advice on using the Barlow Lens. Dont assume that you can put the Barlow on your T ring and camera and take great pictures of Galaxy's,Nebula, star clusters and other deep sky objects it is not good for those subjects. It is very good however for the moon and ideal to take close up shots of the moon. I have tried taking pictures of Jupiter on a very good clear night but the results were poorish far better to use a webcam for planets but that's for later on.