On the night of Jan 21/22, 2024, under poor conditions, I attempted to acquire images of the starfield in which the solar eclipse will occur on Apr 8, 2024. This was my first attempt, and was just a trial run to test my equipment. The results were instructive: I needed different equipment :-/
To begin, during the eclipse, the Sun will be located at (J2000)
RA = 01:10:32 Dec = +07:28:47
= 17.6333 = +7.4797
My original goal was to use a Nikon Z6II camera together with a large Nikon 400mm f/5.6 PC Auto lens, which would yield a field of view around 5 x 3.5 degrees, like this:
In order to avoid trailing of stars due to the Earth's rotation, I figured I ought to mount the camera onto one of our telescopes, in the "piggyback" mode, and allow the telescope to track the stars during the exposures. However, I discovered that we did not have the equipment needed to mount the camera onto either of our two big telescopes (14-inch Celestron or 12-inch Meade). Rats!
I made a note to purchase the required accessories, and decided to jury-rig a setup from the material at hand. I ended up removing the 400mm lens from the camera body and attaching the camera to the Cass focus of the Synta 90mm f/5.6 Maksutov "finder" which is mounted on our 12-inch Meade telescope in the dome.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to focus very well at all; moreover, due to the weight of the camera, the focus might have crept over time as I took images. Most of the pictures I took are out of focus and look pretty bad. Rats. I did manage one decent picture of the Moon, though: exposure time 1/200 sec at ISO 800, at f/5.6 Cass focus.
So, lesson learned: don't try mounting my big Nikon camera on this small telescope.
After returning home, I looked for the items I would need to mount the Nikon camera and its lens in a proper manner to one of the big telescopes.