Hi When I try to take pictures of the moon at night, the all I get is bright light without any detail. The sensor seems overloaded and the image seems smudged. I have tried with the intelligent autofocus also. thanks

Without knowing the make and model of your camera I can't give you a definitive answer, but with most cameras you'll want to set it to manual and pretend you're shooting landscapes under a midday sun.

Camera exposure meters are designed to render the entire scene an average gray. Since most of your picture will likely be a dark sky, the camera will try to expose long enough to bring up the sky to an average gray, making the moon into a featureless white blob. Since you probably want to see the moon and don't care if the sky goes black, you want to expose for the moon.

The moon is just a big rock under a bright sun. There is an old rule for taking pictures under a bright sun called the "Sunny-16 Rule." This rule basically states that the proper exposure under this condition is an aperture of f/16 with a shutter speed of 1/ISO. So, if your camera is set to ISO of 200 then you set the aperture to f/16 and the shutter speed to 1/200 seconds, or any equivalent exposure such as f/11 and 1/400.

Digital cameras make this easier, since you can see the picture and adjust the exposure if it didn't come out right. Take a picture, zoom in on the moon, and see if you can see any details. Use the histogram if available. If the peak is at the right edge of the histogram then you're overexposing---reduce the exposure. You want the peak near the right edge but not touching it.

All this depends on the make and model of your camera. Many point&shoot cameras don't have a manual setting. In that case you're pretty much out of luck and you won't get a good picture of the moon.

You're going to face two separate problems here.

One, the moon occupies a rather small portion of the night sky. Even fully zoomed in, the moon is going to be not much more than a bright spot in the sky.

Two, the camera is designed to assume that almost every scene is an average brightness. Given how much of the scene is a black sky, the camera will attempt to render the sky as average (what photographers call a "medium gray"). This will result in a picture with a gray sky and a featureless white blob for the moon.

If you think about it, the full moon is nothing more than a really big rock under a midday sun. Thus what you want is the same exposure as when taking a picture on a clear sunny day. Unfortunately the camera is going to be fooled by all that dark sky and try to compensate for it. What you really need is to be able to bypass the camera's light meter and set the proper exposure yourself. The C195, unlike more sophisticated cameras, doesn't allow you to do so. Sorry, but that's just the way it is.

You're going to face two separate problems here.

One, the moon occupies a rather small portion of the night sky. Even fully zoomed in, the moon is going to be not much more than a bright spot in the sky.

Two, the camera is designed to assume that almost every scene is an average brightness. Given how much of the scene is a black sky, the camera will attempt to render the sky as average (what photographers call a "medium gray"). This will result in a picture with a gray sky and a featureless white blob for the moon.

If you think about it, the full moon is nothing more than a really big rock under a midday sun. Thus what you want is the same exposure as when taking a picture on a clear sunny day. Unfortunately the camera is going to be fooled by all that dark sky and try to compensate for it. What you really need is to be able to bypass the camera's light meter and set the proper exposure yourself. The C195, unlike more sophisticated cameras, doesn't allow you to do so. Sorry, but that's just the way it is.

1. During the day, use the 17mm eyepiece on a object outside (telephone pole, water tower, etc) then align the finder to what you see in the scope.
2. Put in the 7.5mm eyepiece and fine align the red dot finder.
3. At night, point the finder at the moon (less than half moon or the image is too bright without a moon filter) Use the 17mm eyepiece.
4. Once you see the moon, switch to the 7.5mm lens and enjoy.
5. Download Stellarium or any free astronomy software and see what is in your sky tonight. Your scope should be able to see Jupiter and its moons easily.(Saturn, Mars and Venus when the time is right) Open clusters like Pleiades will be nice is this fast scope.
5. If stars are not sharp, you may need to collimate the scope. Look online for general instructions.

The set may have an ambient light detector - if so then the set up options will allow you to vary the screen brightness - a simple check to find out if this could be the problem would be to display an image during the day then if possible close the blinda and make the room dark - alternatviley do the same at night then switch the room lights on and off and see if the brightness changes.

Yes, If you turned the Night Owl on during the daylight hours, or looking directly into bright lights.
If you have done this more than few time it could have damaged the image intensifier tube. If this happen to many times, it's finny, kaput, so long, it gone south, and gone bye-bye.

Looking at bright lights is damaging to NV devise. The intensity plate in the image tube, magify the existing light about 3000 to 8000 (radian light from the stars, moon and other light sources).
You have 80mm front lens on the Night Owl NOCP5. This mean that more light can inter into image tube.

Sir, have you been looking at bright lights, operate NV system during the day, have you? If not, there could be something else worng with you Night Owl. stewbison

Pictures of the moon require a tripod. Night mode is a good starting place. After taking a test picture, if the moon seems too bright, you need to set the "exposure compensation" to the next lower number. Take another test photo and adjust as necessary one way or another. After you get a successful photo, you will need to crop it a lot to get the moon large enough.

Please readjust the ISO.
In order to find a pattern please experiment: For example: Try Different SCN (If you're experiencing this problem with your night pictures try and use SCN night, the logo shows a moon and a star, with or without Flash.

I hope it works out.

Its problem of bad ccd imager in DSC-T1 and ccd imager will be replaced.
Sony announced free of cost repair scheme for ccd imager problem in DSC-T1 and you can see details on Sony CCD Support.

Simple-- you can also do this during the day on an object at least 100 yards away-- but at night; get the moon centered in the eyepiece and without moving the telescope center the red dot on the moon. This will get you almost aligned-- then put a bright star in the eyepiece and readjust the red dot to center the star.