Thanks Adam! Appreciate all the info, input and thoughts. Should be ordering it this week

Nice Brenno85, you got a picture of the telescope set up?

I'll try and remember to throw one up when I get near the computer.. Got some awesome photos of mars last year also.

Just do it mate. Everyone's gotta have a hobby.. Sometimes I regret buying my first telescope but on a good night it's totally worth it. I've got a 40D and a mount for a refractor telescope.. Worth every penny.

my expensive hobby is putting fuel in my car

Brenno, do you have the system that moves the telescope to sync with the movement of the earth?

I've seen some photographers with that setup before. It looks expensive!

Automated equatorial mount.. And yes.. It's the only way to get a decent photo in my books. I struggled for ages but even a 0.5mm bump of the scope knocks the view out while trying to attach the camera. Plus when you take people out an spend about 10 minutes locating something for them to look at alot of the time it's almost gone before they can get settled in to look in the lens.

But the biggest advantage of the auto mount is you can take photos using a longer exposure which gives you a bit more sharpness in the shot.

im hanging for these pics brenno

I'll get some pics up for you when the missus gets back from visiting her parents. Heaven forbid she be forced to go a couple weeks without Facebook so the laptop and all my photos are in gympie.

Hahahah! Alright no worries mate. Space photos from some that I've seen, you get some cool colours in them..can't wait!

Automated equatorial mount..sounds very technical if you ask me

They actually aren't that exciting.. The telescopes and lenses I use aren't the most powerful ones in the world. Colour shots of the planets require use of special filters to remove excess white light and focus on the colour most natural to what you are viewing. Example mars I use a red filter and Jupiter orange. Saturn blue. To get surface detail of the moon you actually need to use a solar filter that blocks 90% of the light otherwise it's just white haze. The sun requires a special solar filter which I am yet to obtain (cheap they are over a grand). As fitting the filters generally knocks my scope out most of my photography is done in black and white.. If I had a better scope I'd definitely get into it more.. However a better camera is first priority as I use a 2mm lens at the moment so I need a better resolution camera.

Alright so instead of waiting for the missus to get home I decided to do some I-Phone photography of a bit of gear last night and then drag some off a portable hdd which is supposed to keep a backup of my laptop.. (I really should do that a bit more backing up)..

Collection of lenses and filters.

You can stack multiple filter combinations to get different lighting effects.

10mm Lens

2mm lens (The smaller the lens the higher the magnification) So it's interesting to note that when doing photography am actually taking a photo of something through a 2mm view area and then photoshop to blow up the area of interest and get rid of all the black or hazey background.

First telescope (Refractive). On a simple Equatorial mount. Can be used for both land based and astro photography.. Boat or whale watching from a good look out.. Haven't got any photos of that.

I wish I could say this was my rig.. But its actually a mates.. I've used this for my better photography.

This is my actual rig (Reflective) I can use for photography.. The mount is automated. But It's also able to be operated manually.. I don't have a laptop or power hooked up in this photo.

Now for the cool stuff

Mars - Refractor

Jupiter - Reflective

Sun - Refractor - Running 2 x moon filters.. Taken in broad daylight. The combination of the filters blocked out so much light that daylight appeared black and this is how the sun looked.. I'd need a solar filter to actually get more detail..

Saturn - Reflective Scope

None of the last photos were taken using any of my gear.. Except for my star maps.. And my calculations and effort to locate them... (Each image is actually over 100 photos stitched together)

Moon

Moon Surface

Star cluster called M27 (This is probably the best cluster I've ever managed by myself.. However so many photos were involved that we had to use a camera that would plug directly into the firewire port on a computer..)

Which leaves me for the big question back to the original topic of the conversation.. If I already have a 40D.. Are the lenses it uses interchangeable with all modern Canon Cameras?