Andy350

11 minutes ago, michael8554 said:

A lot will depend on which telescope you have, there are limits to the amount of "magnification" is usable, and whether focus will be achievable.

You can attach via a Barlow Lens, these come in 2X to 5X flavours.

Or "old school" Eyepiece Projection, like you were using for your phone.

A short focal length eyepiece is inserted into this adapter:

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/adapters/tele-camera-adaptor-for-eyepiece-projection-astrophotography.html

Michael

 

Thanks Michael.  This would work.  I suppose I should look at using without and see how that goes.  I know I can image the moon in prime.  I am using a 6" Dobsonian.

13 hours ago, shropshire lad said:

Are you going to use the Dslr with a telescope or a camera lens?

 

The only way I can mount is without the lens, I think this is called prime.  I don't know of another way to mount the camera.

Here was my effort from last night.  It was more about playing around with some settings in an old version of Adobe Element using a RAW image from the smart phone.  I still a lot of practice as the focus was off a little, and I will be honest, I wasn't too sure with one of the settings I was playing with, I knew as a RAW image it needed toning down a little.  I've also made it a little green, but with practice I can sort that out.

I had some luck with using the Phone mount adapter last night, I was able to take a RAW image of the moon, sent it to Elements and turn down the exposure, I will post up shortly.  I'm now thinking of mounting the DLSR and giving that a go when the clouds move away.

Am I correct in saying, when using the DSLR, the camera is used in prime only, so you lose the ability to get closer to objects, whereby the phone can zoom, plus that looks through the eyepiece.   Or is the fact that all objects are so far away it doesn't really make much of a difference?

13 hours ago, PeterStudz said:

And don’t quite give up on galaxies, although your are not going to get anything that looks like a Hubble image. Here’s my first attempt with the same Skywatcher 1145p - galaxies M81 & M82 from earlier in the year. Used a cheap £29 motor to “track” for a single 30sec shot on an iPhone. Circle cropped to get hide some unpleasant edge distortion . This was in a Bortle 8 sky, so if taken somewhere darker it would surely be better. 

You've got some lovely photos there.  When you see a photo like this, are the two bright object galaxies and the rest stars?

really helpful advice.  All I need is some clear evenings!

10 minutes ago, Dark Vader said:

No tracking, I've got a SW 200P on a Dobsonian mount. It was a single shot. I've just checked the settings and it says 1/50 sec at ISO50. It was a Samsung A6 on auto through a barlowed BST 15mm if I remember correctly. I may have zoomed the phone a bit (2 - 4 x), can't really recall now. 

Snapseed is a pretty good mobile processing app.

Wow, still a great shot.  Isn't the 200p a 8".  Not sure how the 150p will take this but I can only try.

5 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

Another thing that you'll need is for your phone (if android) to support so called Camera2 API.

That allows for RAW files to be shot instead of using lossy compression like Jpeg (compression looses detail and prevents you from being able to stack your images effectively).

Thanks forgot to say, I have a Huawei P30 Pro, and it does support RAW pics.

5 minutes ago, Dark Vader said:

I can, although they can be tricky to set up in the dark. I'd definitely recommend getting used to setting it up using the Moon. I've had some good lunar results just using the phone's auto focus and exposure. Another tip is if you're not using a remote shutter release, set the self timer at 5-10 seconds so the phone doesn't shake when you press the shutter. Also, don't be afraid to use the phone's zoom a bit.

Andy

That is an amazing photo.  Do you know what settings use used for this.  I'm guessing you were tracking to get this type of picture?

5 hours ago, vlaiv said:

Not necessarily.

Ratio of image scale in prime focus vs afocal method - depends on ratio of focal lengths of eyepiece and camera lens

In this case we have smart phone camera and lens. We need model to determine parameters of eyepiece as there are couple of things we need to adjust properly.

I'll randomly select phone model to give example of how calculations work.

Say we go for Galaxy S8 (random pick)

Here we have pixel size, sensor size, F/ratio of the lens and its equivalent focal length for 35mm film.

1/2.55" sensor has crop factor (here term is actually useful) of ~6.1 - which means that actual focal length of phone camera lens is 26mm / 6.1 = ~4.25mm

That is first parameter that we need - FL of camera lens

Next is entrance pupil (which we must match with exit pupil of scope + eyepiece combination) - we have F/1.4 lens and it has 4.25mm of FL - so our entrance pupil is 3mm - we must not have larger exit pupil than 3mm

It will therefore depend on scope what is the best eyepiece.

Say it is 6" SCT telescope in question. It is F/10 scope so highest focal length that can be used will be ~30mm (anything above will create too large exit pupil and waste light).

Using this calculator:

https://www.pointsinfocus.com/tools/depth-of-field-and-equivalent-lens-calculator/#{"c":[{"f":13,"av":"8","fl":50,"d":3048,"cm":"0"}],"m":0}

we can see how big FOV sensor captures in terms of degrees:

So it is about 80°

We need 30mm 80° AFOV eyepiece and phone for optimum performance (so we cover whole sensor and don't waste light with exit pupil).

From above parameters, we can calculate pixel scale and any needed binning since pixels are rather small.

 

 

Ok, that was all very technical.  Thanks for the detailed response though.

My phone has the following specs for camera.

40 MP (Wide Angle Lens, f/1.6 aperture,OIS) + 20 MP (Ultra Wide Angle Lens, f/2.2 aperture) + 8 MP (Telephoto, f/3.4 aperture,OIS)

I have a dobsonian 150 6".  My eyepieces are a 25mm and 10mm.  If I can I will run in some calculations.

15 minutes ago, Franklin said:

Lens pens work once, they are not self cleaning. Wouldn't recommend them.

Correct way to clean an eyepiece is to bulb blow the dust off. Use a good quality Q-tip that has no scents or lotions added and spray the Q-tip with Baader fluid till wet. Holding the eyepiece upside down clean around the edge of the lens, (reason for holding it upside down is to prevent any spill-off of fluid going inside the eyepiece.) Fresh Q-tip, wetted as before, gently clean from the centre outwards. Don't use more than one stroke with any one side of the Q-tip.(I use about 6 Q-tips per eyepiece.) When done, gently wipe with clean Baader cloth. Tip, don't use both sides of a Baader cloth. The side your hand touches will just smear more grease from your fingers on to the eyepiece.👍

Do you wash the cloth ones all eyepieces are done, I've only two so not that urgent for me.

40 minutes ago, CaseyAstro said:

Hi Andy350,

Would you recommend the celestron adaptor? I am considering getting one soon

hmmmm.  I would like to say yes, but I haven't really used yet.  I did capture a far in the distant tv aerial the other day, came out really well.  But I got stuck last night with being able to line up against eyepiece and capture anything.  Annoyingly Saturn was moving too quickly for me!

I will try again as soon as I can if you can wait?

1 hour ago, bomberbaz said:

Noooooh don't do that, the high powered jets can blast dust so quickly it effectively becomes a sand blaster.

You could try a super soft brush to "gently" dust away any particle, I use one of these to do this prior to cleaning. 

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/astronomy-optics-cleaning-protection/celestron-lens-pen.html

A very gentle buffing with this before cleaning with the baader wonder fluid and cloth as mentioned above by the 2 john's. 

I'll get a lens pen too.  the modelling air brushes are not that high powered.  I can set the output from 0-60 PSI.

40 minutes ago, johninderby said:

One important thing is to get an air blower to,blow off dust first. Available from Amazon or eBay etc.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blower-Silicone-Cleaner-Keyboard-Screens/dp/B08TW92B85/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=Air+blower&qid=1637241436&qsid=262-0528779-5571604&s=electronics&sr=1-5&sres=B086LKWGPH%2CB08TW92B85%2CB00017LSPI%2CB097PRDY64%2CB01B8NPE5I%2CB00F1WGUGK%2CB07N7QJC9G%2CB06XBHDNZS%2CB08SMR5WP5%2CB09FLNFBC6%2CB07QYF8953%2CB08GKQ1NF7%2CB075YF6FW2%2CB07S629NH6%2CB0966LZJP9%2CB08D65YMG7%2CB07SRV9HQ4%2CB07YKCV4XF%2CB0027CSIUI%2CB08F76QRWC

I can use my mobile air compressor which I use when painting scale models.

24 minutes ago, JuliusKlugi said:

It depends on what your aim is. What I take from your post is that you’re not really wanting to do/expecting proper astrophotography - you just want to know if it’s possible to get something with your phone. Well you’re not going to get much detail with a smart phone but if you just want to just take no frills photos to convey as close as you can what you see through the eyepiece then snapping galaxies is entirely possible. A good app to use is Nightcap as it allows you to adjust exposure time and ISO. For galaxies these will need to be close to maximum. You can also set up a timer and turn on light boost. You’ll have to set up the internal programmer to around 10 seconds which will allow the camera to take 10x1 second shots, so the ability to track will be a requirement. Here’s some to the results you can achieve in a bortle 6 area with no fancy processing. Again, they won’t win prizes but will convey to others what you are seeing - sort of. 

 

 

I suppose I'm not too sure, my scope was a present last Xmas.  Initially I was happy looking for planets.  It was only when I spoke to my brother in law that he mentioned that he had the Phone adapter, and it went from there.

I would like to be able to take some pics that I can keep, I really like some of the images that you've captured.  Not sure what you mean by proper astrophotography as I'm still new.  I'd like to take it as far as I can with what I have got.  Maybe at some point pick up a mount that can track.

I've just received a book called "Turn Left at Orion", so that might help.  I still need to make sense of what lens length means against what scope I have.

Thanks both for the quick responses.  I will order this ASAP

I've got a few small marks, maybe I've touched a lens, this is on two of the lenses.  Can someone please point me to a good cleaning kit for them?  I think it's mainly on the outer part, but I suppose it wouldn't hurt cleaning properly.  I've read that you can take them apart, maybe something for the future.

37 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

Galaxies are normally imaged at prime focus, so without an eyepiece. With an eyepiece the galaxy's projected image will be too large to fit on you chip.

Olly

Hi Olly, I do have an older digital SLR camera with an adapter, so could use that for prime.  forgot to mention that!!

Thanks for help and advice, really appreciate it, I know these beginner questions are very repetitive, but I'm really clueless.

Yes, I kind of gave up with phone last night, it was cold and I wanted to see something, luckily Jupiter and Saturn said hello, first time for seeing this two.  I had seen them before and just assumed they were stars!!!

The apps I have used before are.....

Stellarium - Paid

SkySafari - free

Startracker - free

Just installed Skeye

For a phone camera app I have installed - DeepSkyCamera, but not had any results yet, just blackness, but this might have been an alignment problem.  Even in day time using phone it takes a little while before the phone seems to know that it's looking through an eyepiece.

Just another question, and happy to post somewhere else.  What is the best method for cleaning eyepieces?  Don't want to damage anything.  There is a mark from before, and also some condensation from last night.

Many thanks
Andy

15 hours ago, powerlord said:

deepskycamera is good for stacking etc.

However, I think other than M31 you'll stuggle to get any galaxies tbh, even if OTA is long enough. moon should be fine though, and M42 is pretty easy to get a 'decent' pic on a phone.

here's one I took last year when I started and before I went down the imaging rabbit hole.

Thanks for the image.  Looks great.  I had a play last night, couldn't see anything via the phone, like others have said I need to line up to something first.  But without phone I did see Jupiter and Saturn for the first time which was good.

4 minutes ago, Maideneer said:

I guess we would need to know the rest of your set-up to see if anything is even possible first. The Milky Way is probably within reach but others galaxies probably aren't going to happen as those are so far away and you need to track and capture large amounts of data and then stack it.

Even with larger consumer scopes, galaxies can appear just a gray, fuzzy spots if looking through an eyepiece.

Hi, I only have a Super 10, and super 25 eye pieces.  I also have a 2X Barlow, this is on a 6" Dobsonian.

I read about stacking images using RAW formats.  I do appreciate that without being able to track this will be tricky!!  

And new to everything really!

I've got the NexYYZ phone adapter, so looking at different setting on both phone and eye pieces.  What I've realised is, if I want at some point to capture a galaxy, how do I know where to point in the first place.  I do have Stellarium app, but I would need to use this to take the pics.

Ok thanks for your help.  Yes, I've seen one of these, If I can get something to work I will get one of these.

Hi all, I was hoping that I would have been a lot more active by now, but life gets in the way.

I was bought the Celestron nexyz phone adapter and would like to start using it, I have a few recommended settings got the phone that I can try for some long exposure.

My question is really, what setup would be best for taking some shots of possible galaxies.  I only have a Super 10, and super 25 eye pieces.  I also have a 2X Barlow.

Andy

8 minutes ago, Orange Smartie said:

The amount you see will very much depend on the viewing conditions on the night and the objects you're looking at.  I've not spent a lot of time looking at planets (at least not with my 6" dob) so can't really comment on that, but at the moment I think Mars is quite far away.  You'll clearly be able to tell that it's a planet and not a star as it's a disk rather than a single point of light, but other than that I've not made out a lot of detail yet.  Orion nebula (M42) looks amazing, especially with a nice dark sky.  I've been really enjoying looking at double and multiple stars - if you have a low horizon to the south you should be able to find the "winter albireo" just below Sirius - lovely colour contrast.  My other fave is Almach - a beautiful blue/yellow combo.

 

I need to concentrate and find objects that will be viewable at the correct time of year.  I remember being out last summer when we had a lot of clear nights and saying "Wish I had a scope right now".  Hopefully soon.  I think I will aim for M42 on a good dark evening.  I did manage a few pics of the moon with DSLR, nothing great.  We don't really have a low south horizon where we live, but I could get the car onto some elevated areas in the summer.  I'm in Stroud, Gloucestershire so we have a few hills.