| I don't do a lot of astrophotography, but I occasionally point a digital
camera, handheld, into the eyepiece. This is afocal photography, since the camera
is just taking a picture of the (virtual) image formed by the eyepiece, the same image you
see with your eye. The fancier kind of photography, called direct projection or prime
focus, involves attaching the camera back directly to the telescope, using the telescope
like a very large telephoto lens. (Many of the largest telephoto lenses, the kind you see
at sporting events, are in fact small catadioptric telescopes.) Clockwise from the top:
Jupiter in daylight on November 9, 2004, at about 11:00 a.m., a half hour before it was
occulted (eclipsed) by an almost new Moon; a first quarter Moon just after dark on June
10, 2000; the total lunar eclipse of February 20, 2008; the Christmas, 2000 partial solar
eclipse.
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