adder001

Thats impressive for a phone camera. Did you use any zoom? I notice that the note 9 has a 2x optical zoom. I wonder what the results would be like on a really dark cloudless sky, I bet Andromeda would be quite good.

Thanks for your reply, thats really inspiring I am imagining what I could do by using multiple exposures and stacking. definitely looking at getting one although the Samsung S20 ultra looks good as well

Hi Everyone, Not posted for a long time due to not having any gear but still keep popping in checking whats going on because once you have the bug it never leaves I think. Anyway its almost time for my phone upgrade and I have been looking at the specs of the Huawei P30 pro, the main interesting thing is that it has a lens that can go upto 5 x optical which according to the literature that makes it 125mm focal length equivalent and it also is capable of shooting raw and has a maximum shutter speed of 30 seconds also F3.4. Also the price remains the same on my contract so it feels like a free astronomy tool as well as something that I use anyway. Now I know this is like comparing a Ferrari to a Robin Reliant but I remember when I still had my canon 1300D I got some pretty good images of Andromeda, M42 and all the easy big DSO targets at about 150 to 200mm standard kit lens about F6 as well I think and that was only on a EQ2 mount that was motor driving on RA only, also my polar alignment wasnt brilliant either I just used drift as best as I could because with an EQ2 as there is no polar scope. So I was wondering what would be possible with this tiny phone camera. I realise that the lens is tiny and so is the sensor when compared to the DSLR that I used to have but I have been excited by some of the pics that people have taken of the milky way and constellations etc but I wonder if things like Andromeda and Orion nebula would be possible even if only tiny. I was thinking I moght get a cheap tripod or even a bean bag to rest the phone on and see what I can get using short exposures and stacking

That is amazing, you have even got the horse head in there. I've been trying to get that for ages. 2 questions is your sky really dark and 2nd can you confirm that your exposure time was multiple 4 second exposures? If it was I am totally inspired to have another go myself when I finally get my gear again.

Yes you are correct in that if it is too bright then indeed all you see is a bright red light. But once it is dimmed then there is just enough red light to light the markings but not enough to obscure the stars(some do still get drowned out even by that small ammountnof light) but polaris and other bright-ish stars are visible through it. Another thing that I found is that if you have the red lightnon the side then you get an uneven illumination and it ia a little harder to get the balance between lighting the markings and seeing the stars through it

I would love to get the horsehead even close to that. My biggest problem is to my south are 3 football pitches with lights as well as usual LP. I have been trying to get this target from my back garden since last year, but nothing as good as that. This is my latest attempt and thats with a star adventurer with 200mm lens, 30 second subs x 60. I definitely need to goto a dark site but I cant find anywhere suitable or anywhere that I would be happy/safe with my astro gear out.

Yep, definitely recommend it. I have a similar setup, canon 1300d, standard kit lens 75-300mm and I have mounted it on my aluminum tripod that my old EQ2 mount used to sit. I use it now as my main mount because my telescope is only a 90mm mak-cass so it can easily take the weight as well, but mostly I just use the camera attached to a ball head adapter on the star adventurer. Only criticism is the polar finder illuminator (see my other thread about that and how I remedied it) I can easily achieve 90 seconds at about 200mm and I reckon that if I really spent a long time polar aligning or maybe drift aligning and getting it absolutely perfect it would probably do much longer. Anyway I have not had it very long but its a massive improvement over the EQ2 mount that I used to use, here are a couple of pics. Both 200mm lens 90 sec ISO 800. (I think I took about 90 subs, 15 darks, 15 bias, no flats. Stacked in DSS and then I adjusted in photoshop to remove gradients and set levels, curves etc.) Andromeda and Pleides(The colours are completely wrong in this one though. I tried to bring out the blue but it caused the stars to turn green :), I think I need to reprocess

Yep. Thats my next project ?

Hi Steve, I thought about that or something similar where I still use the adapter but it was the not being able to switch it off bothered me and because I cant use it as often as I would like I bet the battery would be dead when I came to use it. glad it works though:)

As the title says I have made a DIY version of the polar scope illuminator for my Skywatcher star adventurer. I have only had it for about 3 weeks and I must say it is fantastic, well made feels solid and is easy to use. However the illuminator is really bad. I can not believe that they made something so good like the star adventurer where you can see that a lot of thought has gone in to designing it for ease of use and functionality but the illuminator appears to be an afterthought. The issues that I had are:- 1. You cant switch it off ! (You can only dim it right down or unscrew the cap so that the battery doesnt contact and then store it upside down) 2. If you use the attachment so that it can be used with the L bracket, the thing is unstable and keeps falling off. 3. hard to adjust when you are crouching down and looking through the polar scope, I just kept knocking it off when trying to turn the brightness dial. So I decided that I would make my own. Anything would be better than the one it came with to be quite honest which is a pity because the star adventurer itself is brilliant and well made. I bought small project box (£1.05 from CPC) and the rest of the bits I already had but all you need is a 1k resistor, 10k variable resistor(Linear), an LED, a switch and a battery(I used a 3v cr2302 but any 3v approx setup would do, eg 2 x AAA batteries) so the total cost would be probably less than a fiver if you had to get everything. I had to make quite a big hole in the box which I initially drilled then made bigger with a knife, thats why it looks a bit scruffy but I'm not too bothered about that so long as it works. Then I attached the whole unit to the L Bracket with Velcro where it will stay but If I need to remove it I will just peel it off. I have attached some pictures and the circuit diagram in case anybody else would like to do something similar. Now I can just leave it in place and switch it on/off as required and I dont keep knocking it off. Hope this is of some help to someone who may be in a similar situation

Finally gave up on Lin-Guider, I feel that I tried everything. Its like I am just trying to push water uphill, different installs raspbian o/s, Linguider versions and different firmware still no joy. Don't understand what I am doing wrong. I have followed lots of of different setup/installation instructions that people have said they have had it working but still not for me. This programme written in python however appears to work, I get a good camera view and signals to the GPIO although I have only used an LED on the pins at the moment but at least that shows that it is doing something so I thinh that I will go with this for now. So many thanks for all the advise and I will post any developments that I have

Yeah it is very odd the various options and layouts when it comes to the Gpio configurations. Thanks again for all your advice. If I get anywhere with this I will post more info. Cheers

Just check and mine is 4.1.1 so there may be some slight differences here, I am going to try and install the older version

yeah I run it first, followed by lin guider. But something interesting is happening where I have to modify the text in the file from high to 1 or it just errors. I wrote my own script just to confirm that it works and my version only seems to work if I use digits rather than words eg., 1 instead of high. This was tested by connecting an LED to GPIO 22

Cheers, thats interesting I will have a look at that, Thanks