In an instant, my new Canon Rebel XTi has become the mainstay of my astro-photographic efforts. It offered me the two things I was missing most an an astro-cam. The ability to shoot through my telescope at prime focus and the ability to take extended duration exposures. With these two new capabilities, I was now able to venture into a realm of deep sky astro-imaging. Distant galaxies, nebula and such were all now within reach.

Eyepiece projection astrophotography is fine for smaller objects, like that planets. But for extended objects like galaxies, nebulae and star clusters, prime focus was the only way to go. Using the old Canon camera adapter from my old film Rebel, I was able to get a new adapter from William Optics. This had a 2″ throat whereas my old one only had a 1.25″. This allowed to to illuminate the entire chip, without vignetting

The bulb setting on this camera, along with the ability to image at ISO1600 allowed me to pull in significantly more light in a given exposure. As most of what I want to image is pretty faint to start with, these were absolutely essential additions to my astro photography toolbox.