Messy Hair 101

Maybe there's a way to pull the images off the phone to a computer and stack them, depending on format, or someone has made an app to do it. I'm sure there are people here who know more about it than I do. Still, they're great images for single shots, just keep working on getting the best focus and doing things like remotely triggering the camera will really help. What you said about the brightness and shutter speed is interesting. You want the fastest possible shutter speed and lowest ISO to try and get a sharp image. That's probably easier with a dedicated astro cam or DSLR where you have more control. The other issue is the seeing which will cause the moon to "wobble" a bit and make focus harder. Stacking would help with the former.

Ah I was going the wrong way! Glad you have got it sorted though.

Amazing what you can do with a camera phone now! On the second one, it does look a bit soft. Is it possible to stack pictures using your phone? You can take a video but I don't know about the file formats. Just make sure it's as sharp as you can get it too. It's harder to do with a full moon. The terminator on a partial moon really helps you to see details and fine tune your focus.

Sounds like you don't have enough back focus. I'm assuming you have an eyepiece adapter which connects the T ring to the focuser? Try moving the camera and adapter out of the focuser slowly to see if the target starts to come to focus. You could practice on a distant object in the day like a TV aerial. If you find it does come to focus, you need a longer adapter. Another option is to use your Barlow and take a mosaic or the moon and stitch the images together to get a really detailed shot. Although I appreciate that's a step further when you're just starting out.

If I point my mount at Bill's chimney next door that's normally in the ball park 🤣 I do use a polar finder app and align visually. +1 for Sharpcap Pro and it's alignment routine. I seem to get acceptable results from visual though (for now).

+1 for the dummy battery. You should just be able to buy them with a mains plug from Amazon. I got one for my Canon 6dmkii and it's a life saver. No more messing with batteries

4 seconds for drift alignment as Sharpcap needs 15 stars to align. When guiding with PHD2, I can get a couple of decent stars with exposures of a second or more, although I find 3 seconds works best, anything shorter and I tend to be chasing the guiding. When I first started I thought "oo I need to take really short exposures often to be more accurate" but it's a bit counter-intuitive. A bit longer seems to work better. I am in Bortle 5/6 skies if that helps.

Yes I use a ZWO 120MC-S on a 50mm Skywatcher guidescope and have had no issues with guiding. Even used this for drift alignment with Sharpcap. Had to bump up the exposure time to about 4 seconds but it did work. I originally bought it for planetary work but it's had a second lease of life as a guide camera.