holy crap thank you!! Sorry for the delay.

I had seen the 3rd link, but those first two are great and look really helpful. I'll give them a thorough read.

Right, so I've gotten a couple of the (cheaper) pieces I'll need to do a DIY solution, from some stuff I've read online and a bit of advice I've gotten. I got this kit, which should let me do T-ring to M42, and M42 to T-mount (on my camera side). The T-ring goes outside of the trinoc tube like yours, so the eyepiece should go in there.

From some of the other stuff I've read, choosing the eyepiece and setting the height of the camera is a very interconnected process, where the height depends on the eyepiece and a bunch of other stuff... someone suggested getting a helicoid adapter to adjust the height really precisely. Did you do something like that, or just carefully set the height by hand?

also, are you using a plan objective?

ahhh, there are just a million variables here. Thanks again!