Last night, I received the packages from my friends at Amazon with the two components I needed for my next steps with the telescope. Well, at least I thought I needed them. The first piece, I thought, was going to be an adapter for the Nikon mount on one side, and the telescope on the other. That would have allowed my camera to be closer to the front element of the telescope, which would have allowed me to find a proper focus point. No such luck. It turns out the new adapter was the same as the old adapter and it still required the Universal Adapter that pushed the camera back those extra few inches that were keeping it from achieving focus.

Strike one.

Next up, I received a USB-to-RS232 cable that I need to connect my serial-port-less computer (more accurately, my wife’s since the telescope software is Windows-only). Everything connected properly, but it turns out the model of hand controller I have is non-upgradable.

Strike two.

Finally, even with those setbacks, I was going to try different cameras, settings, adapter, and gaffer’s tape to see if I could string something together on a budget. But it’s really hard to focus on an object in the sky with all of the clouds and rain.

Strike three.

The good news is that it’s only the first out, and I’m a long way from done. I’ve done some research and am working on some drawings to document the focus problem, and hope to have that up shortly.

If it were easy, everyone would be doing it!