Meade Piggyback Bracket for all 12" Meade Catadioptric Scopes

The Meade #07399 Piggyback Bracket fits their 12" diameter catadioptric telescopes, and is a popular and easy way to get started in astrophotography.

Stunning, remarkably detailed wide field photos can be taken by attaching your SLR camera atop the telescope, guiding the camera through motion of the telescope itself.  But you can, in fact, use any camera with a 1/4"-20 socket; it certainly helps to have a "bulb" setting for the shutter and manual control over the aperture, though.

For shorter exposures of 5-7 minutes, it is acceptable to use the scope in an altazimuth mode.  For longer exposures beyond 7 minutes, such as any wide field pictures with nebula or other deep space objects in the image, you'll need to either have an equatorially-mounted scope or add a Meade wedge to put the altazimuth mounted scope into an equatorial mode.  This assures no star trails or drifting of the elements in the image.

It certainly helps to have a fast aperture lens for the camera, such as the f/1.2 50mm, 55mm and 85mm lenses available to fit various manufacturer's systems, as this drastically shortens the exposure times.

The slotted mounting holes in the base of this piggyback bracket allow it to be installed in predrilled threaded holes on the Meade 12" scopes, and doesn't fit others.