**EDIT**

Some people can't take jokes, so I deleted this...

 

That's not very christian.

 

I can hear the baby jesus crying.

 

No, but it's funny.

Not like it's dirty or anything. What's Christianity got to do with it?

 

I would say it's dirty. And possibly against forum rules.

 

I deleted it.

It wasn't dirty. Just a pic of a guy with his head up his butt. You know, like the old saying... Sheesh... You guys need to lighten up...

 

... I'm speechless.

 

All the "bad" parts of the body were covered. There are women on TV showing much more than that pic did, and they are considered ok. I still don't see the problem.

 

My dad and I tried this manually - we attached an old-ass Minolta to the eyepiece, got it focused and everything and tried a few exposures.

...surprisingly, it worked! The old Minolta, paired with the telescope's manual mount and everything, gave us a few semi-clear photos of the moon's surface. However, they are analog - i.e., prints that were developed - so I'd need to dig 'em out if I was going to post them.

...still. Point is, you can jury-rig a manual camera to snap the image you want with a manual telescope mount.

 

If your highest power eyepiece is that 9mm giving you 111x, then you'll be ok using a barlow lens with all your eyepieces. However, just some words of warning. When you use a barlow lens, yes, you get higher magnification, but you also get a fainter image than what you'd have using a single eyepiece giving an equal magnification. It won't be as noticeable on planets, but definitely on other objects. If you do get into observing other things such as nebulae, it's also good to keep in mind a sort of "rule of thumb" in observing. Unless the skies are really good, the highest magnification you should use is 40x or 50x per inch of telescope aperture (diameter). Again, it's the problem of higher magnification. The higher the magnification, the fainter the object will appear.

 

It works for the moon because it's so bright you don't need long exposure times, but that sort of thing probably wouldn't work with the Orion Nebula or Andromeda.

I know  

 

Not completely. It goes through phases, although I don't remember exactly why since it's outside of our orbit. (Venus often shows up as a crescent because it's inside our orbit...)

My problem is my image with my 9mm doesn't completely focus. I've worked on collimating the telescope but it doesn't totally help. Several in the local astronomers club "poo poo" my scope as cheap, but it's all I've got. I don't have $25K to drop on something like that.  

 

Does the end of the focuser tube look like it might be easily removed? I had problem focusing an eyepiece I had borrowed from a friend. Since my telescope has a slide-tube focuser, I removed a couple parts from it and gained the extra 1/4" of focuser travel I needed to get a sharp image. I'd assume you have a rack and pinion focuser. The end of the tube that holds the eyepiece in place might be removable, somehow. If it can easily be removed (and put back in place) without doing any damage or making it so that the end piece will then fit too loosely, you could remove that part once you've focused in as well as you could. At that point, though this won't be fun, you just hold the eyepiece in the tube and find your ideal focus "manually." With that end piece removed, you might be able to gain the extra travel needed to focus.

Otherwise, you might have luck using a different type or brand of 9mm eyepiece.