Meade ETX-90

Astronomy at Parramatta High
—the telescope used for these images—
Meade ETX-90

The telescope is a Meade ETX-90, a Maksutov Cassegrain reflector telescope.
This little beast is a delight to use for casual astronomical viewing, but it is not well-suited to astrophotography. It is capable of taking decent shots, but even the manufacturers admit that it is not a great platform for photography. (We enthususiasts love a challenge.)

One of the problems is movement of the image. This can be seen most graphically in the Saturn and Jupiter animated gifs on these pages. These fairly accurately depict the movement at the focal point at medium magnification.
This motion has three main causes:

Sidereal motion; i.e. the apparent movement of the stars and planets relative to the earth;
Mount and Footing movement; i.e. vibrations induced by footfalls, passing traffic, wind etc. acting on the telescope and tripod; and
Atmospheric disturbances; such as those which cause the stars to "twinkle".

The sidereal motion is barely adequately compensated for by the equatorial drive on the ETX-90. Even when set up well, a star or planet will still drift perceptably across the field of view. A "perfect" equatorial drive, complete with Periodic Error Correction, is an expensive option. Having said that, the little battery-operated setup on the ETX did a creditable job on the two planetary images shown on this site.
The mount vibrations were very nearly eliminated in this setup. The tripod and alt-az mount, manufactured in the Parramatta High School Industrial Arts workshops, is over-engineered (deliberately), as heavy as blazes, and very steady. The ETX fork mount, however, is prone to vibration (but that isn't a problem if we don't touch it).
Not much we can do about the atmospherics, short of moving to Gilgandra. That step comes next.

The camera is a Vcam CU-98 USB digital webcam.

For such a device, it has a reasonable resolution of 640x480 pixels with a maximum colour depth of 24 bits.
Its output is through a USB cable and it seems to require Win'98. A laptop is by far the best option for convenience. (Try running inside to tweak the software, then running back out to adjust the focus or aim... no thanks!)
The software is satisfactory, but lacks the manual control over exposure we really need. Movies (avi) or stills (up to 640x480) can be produced with ease.

Mounting the camera onto the telescope was pure simplicity! The lens supplied with the webcam was simply unscrewed (the focus adjustment) and removed. A narrow close-up ring with a Pentax thread was epoxied onto the camera body, then the standard Meade T2 mount accessories took it from there.

Jump to near occultations, lunar eclipse, Saturn, Jupiter, or the moon (close-up).