Actual picture of the moon with my NEX3 and Telescope March 2013

Recently I purchased a Celstron 127SLT Telescope and also purchased what is called a T-Adapter for my Sony NEX 3 Camera. I was trying to figure out how to do Astrophotography with it –  and after some serious Internet searching, I was able to fine 1 line that said how to get the adapter to work with the camera.  Hopefully by publishing this post, I can save some search and frustration efforts for other people.

Here is a picture of the Celestron 127SLT telescope that I purchased.  I chose this one based on personal feedback from people I communicate with on Twitter as well as I felt thees options would help me actually USE this telescope:

• Maksutov-Cassegrain, which as I understand makes it more suitable for lunar and planetary viewing
• Fully Computerized so it would be easier to find planets / stars
• 127mm Aperture (5”)

OK, now that you know what type of Telescope I purchased, lets talk about what this post is really about –  Astrophotography and saving other Sony NEX owners the joy of trying to figure out how to do it!

First, you will need a few things.  Besides a Sony NEX Camera, you will need two things:

T2 T Telescope Mount Lens

Celestron 93625 Universal 1.25” Camera T-Adapter

Once you have those two items, you will need carefully screw them together.  The threads are very fine and can be a challenge, take your time.  I had a hard time threading them together, I put them down and walked away for a minute.  Came back, no problem.  Once you have them mated, I would not “un-mate” them, ever.

Now that they are together, you need to mount them to your Sony NEX camera. The red dot on the NEX Adapter aligns with the WHITE dot on the Camera.

Once you have them mounted, the kit should look like this:

Now that the camera lens is mounted, we need to make a change to the camera settings.

The reason we need to make some changes to the camera is because on a normal Sony NEX lens, is has some type of chip that tells the camera what is attached

In the adapter, that part is missing as there is no intelligence in the lens

So, what we need to do is the following –  from the menu, select Setup

Then scroll down until you find “ Release w/o Lens”

And Enable that.  This will allow the shutter to operate when it does not sense a lense.

If you do not do that, this is the error you will receive when you try to take a picture;

Now that you have that done, the next thing I recommend that you do is set a self-timer delay.

If you have a remote to take a pic, that is good too.  Since I do not, I use the delay to take the pictures so the telescope is not shaking.

I sent mine to 10 seconds with 3 continuous pics to be taken.  Figured one of them should come out OK!

After that, you are ready to attach the camera to the telescope!

But before I do that, the T-Adapter for the camera does have a threaded fitting so that you can add lenses.

Here I have installed the Moon filter that I have. This also helps to protect the camera as nothing can drop into the camera lens.  This lens came with the Accessory Kit I purchased with my Telescope.

To mount, just remove the eye-piece from the telescope and insert the camera in its place.  After that, you are ready to rock and roll!

If you want, you can use the LCD on the camera to look through the telescope.  Here you can see me looking at my neighbor down the streets satellite dish

Here is the pic that I took (I did forget to clean the telescope lens)

That about covers it!  Enjoy!!!

Oh, one last thing.   The movement of the moon will be more obvious when you are taking pictures of it – be aware of where the Moon is situated in your camera.  Might want to be a little ahead of it so that it is centered in the picture.

Telescope:

[AMAZONPRODUCT=B0038LX8XE] 

Accessory Kit

[AMAZONPRODUCT=B00006RH5I]

T-Adapter

[AMAZONPRODUCT=B0000665V6]

T2 Adapter for NEX

[AMAZONPRODUCT=B0031CH93U]