I have always thought that it would be useful to know what an object would look like through the telescope / camera before setting up for the night. This would obviously be useful when planning which objects to view and photograph. It would also be a useful way to compare the view through different telescopes (e.g. Meade SCT vs ED80 Refractor).
Last night, I configured the Stellarium 'Ocular' plugin for my telescope and camera.
I was pretty pleased with the plugin. The attached screenshot show a picture of the Orion Nebula which I have previously taken using my LX90/Canon EOS550D compared with the Stellarium plugin view. They are identical....
This is definately a tool which I will continue to use for planning observing/imaging sessions.
