Hi, nice piece of kit excuse me while I wipe the drool from my mouth
. If you want to use you D50 there are a number of options available ( See below), however you will have to learn to align the scope to counter the Earths rotation, until you accurately do this you are very limited in terms of astrophotography:
1) Attached the camera using a t mount directly to the rear of the scope (prime focal) or the eyepiece (afocal). Both will give you stunning results.
2) Piggy back the camera on top of the scope, this method is often advised for beginners something I'm trying at the moment basically using the scope to auto guide for very long exposures, on a 18mm lens you will achieve breath taking views of the Milky way etc (I think but not sure on the SCT's some manual re-alignment might be necessary, I know on my Meade etx an illuminated eyepiece can help achieve this).
3) Scrap the D50. If you have a compact digital hold this up to the eyepiece. This will give you great shots of the moon; check out my moon pics as an example. Set the camera to macro, infinity focus, wide aperture and manual white balance. This way you can get a fairly high shutter speed to counter the Earths rotation.
4) The most expensive option, buy a dedicated CCD imager. These little beauties are the ultimate imaging tool for the astrophotographers. Your telescope is design especially for astrophotography so best of luck. There’s 100s of websites out there where you can get more detailed advice.
One other thing to remember DSLR are good for astrophotography, but at long exposures noise and hot pixels become a real problem, there are techniques to reduce the problems but this is a field were film cameras are still highly regarded as a better option. Hope this at least points you in the right direction, good luck and I look forward to seeing your pictures in the
Gallery soon!
Karl.