The Moon Through a William Optics 66mm Petzval

During the last couple of weeks, I have been wrestling with the back focus on my WO66mm. Gee, it's a picky little scope as far as focusing is concerned! Even to go from a Pan 22mm eyepiece to a Radian 10mm eyepiece, I need to swap out diagonals AND change extension tubes!

Add a camera into the mix and it's back to the drawing board. Good old Scopestuff helped me out, though. I purchased a direct SCT 2" attachment to T-Ring, plus a 10mm extension ring and that did the trick. I really am pushing it as far as back focus is concerned with the Nikon D40, but with the aforementioned extension tube combination am able to get there. Now, the scope with extension tube and camera attached is LONG. Really long. I haven't put this combination on top of my LX200 yet, but it's going to look pretty silly as it is by far longer than the OTA of the LX200 itself. Perhaps with the dew shield on the LX200 attached, it might not look too bad. I should have enough counterweight to handle it, too.

Anyway, below is a quick image I took of the near full moon between heavy clouds. Not bad for a quick 1/250 second exposure at ISO800! I am looking forward to aiming this new rig at some larger DSOs.