PeterStudz

I got the Opticron Adventurer 42mm T WP Binocular for my 10 yr old daughter. Long eyerelief as she wears glasses and has no trouble with them. £69 from FLO.

There’s an example of a right-angled finder fitted to a 130p here…

Here in Southampton I’ve done my best to help by taking week to do telescope maintenance and modifications. Although at my rate it’ll probably take a bit longer. Usually when that happens they sky magically clears

@Kon is correct - without tracking star trailing will show on anything but the moon/planets. Although at low magnification you can get a reasonable image of something like the Orion Nebula. If nothing else the colours picked up by the phone that cannot be seen with the eye are certainly interesting. 

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. 

Not quite up there with @Dark Vader lovely shot  but I got this last spring with a smaller aperture telescope than yours. This was with a 114mm  - a Skywatcher Skyhawk 1145p - on a wobbly old EQ1. So you should be able to get something in between

I have these cheap snow boots for £15. With thick socks they are enough to keep my feet warm. Even in the Alps, walking in the snow at -15 to -18C.

https://www.decathlon.co.uk/p/men-s-warm-waterproof-snow-hiking-boots-sh100-x-warm/_/R-p-108105?mc=8344304

Yes, I saw your moon pictures. They did turn out well! Much of this, inc phone adaptors, are what you get use to. I haven’t given up on the NexYZ and will certainly give it another good go. It’s probably better suited to something like my and your 200p.

As soon as @Stu mentioned this app I downloaded it - thanks for that. I do think that an app like this, or some addition to the native iOS camera app, is they way forward. There must be a lot of untapped potential in smartphones and their cameras for this kind of thing.

I had a quick go on Orion with Nocturne last week in my light polluted Bortle 7-8 sky. That’s the first picture. It seems to deal with light pollution well. The second is with my iPhone 12 native camera app using a 30 sec “exposure”. The light pollution is obvious plus (not surprisingly) there’s some star trailing. And I know that when I’ve used the native iOS app in Night Mode in a truly dark sky the background is almost dark. The 3rd picture is the native iOS shot with some quick and dirty editing.

Since then things have been rather cloudy 😕

PS - the Nocturne shot looks more realistic &  natural.

I have an iPhone 12 (non Pro) and tried a few iPhone apps including…

NightCap - ProCam - SlowShutter - Camera+ 2 - Lightroom - ImageCam - CortexCam - SpiralCam

Both telescope afocal and wide-field on a tripod. Personally everything I’ve tried so far fails to beat the native iOS camera app. Mind, I might well be doing something wrong! However, I can see than one of the above apps might be better on an older iPhone.

The iPhone 12 doesn’t have an astronomy mode. But it does have something called Night Mode which comes on in low light conditions. The allows “exposures” of up to 30 seconds. Although what it actually does is take several shots and stacks - ten 3 sec or nine 3.3 sec shots - depending on what/where you read. 

I’ve heard that the iPhone 13 goes further than this but I’ve no experience of using it.

I had a quick go on Orion with Nocturne last week in my light polluted Bortle 7-8 sky. That’s the first picture. It seems to deal with light pollution well. The second is with my iPhone 12 native camera app using a 30 sec “exposure”. The light pollution is obvious plus (not surprisingly) there’s some star trailing. And I know that when I’ve used the native iOS app in Night Mode in a truly dark sky the background is almost dark. The 3rd picture is the native iOS shot with some quick and dirty editing.

On 16/10/2021 at 09:17, Kon said:

That's excellent for a single frame from a mobile movie. It will be interesting to see if you stack the movie if it brings out more features.

By the way, what mobile holder are you using?

Thanks! Was pleased & pleasantly surprised the result. Have been very busy recently so only just had some spare time to reply. 

When I get hold of a PC I’ll try and take a proper look at the videos I’ve taken and try stacking. Maybe a nice winter evening activity. There are definitely some good frames in there! One of the things I found was, on my iPhone 12 at least, is that I got far better results when I zoomed in the video a little when recording. 1.7x seemed to be the limit. It wasn’t the same as zooming in via editing after the video had been taken. Odd, as I have learnt to avoid that on pictures through the eyepiece. On the iPhone 12 it’s digital zoom after all. 

The phone mount I used is the one shown in the pictures. The red marks are some mods I plan to do but haven’t got around to doing. Can’t remember who I bought it from but there seem to be a few people selling the same or very similar design. But can remember that I paid £9.99. 

It’s simple, light, easy to use in the dark once you get the hang of things and it fits the BST StarGuiders that I mostly use really well once the rubber eyecup is removed. Once on the eyepiece the the “z” adjustment is near perfect although you can get some movement by twisting up the barrel of the eyecup.

I also have the Celestron NeXYZ but I find it heavy and on a small telescope with a basic focuser it pulls on the eyepiece/focuser assembly. It’s slight but enough to effectively put things out of collimation. On something larger and more substantial, like my Skyliner 200p, not so much but it’s still there. Also my phone doesn’t quite sit level on the mount. I bodged it with a bit of card packing but it’s annoying! Consequently I’ve stopped using it altogether. 

Not just me then. For me just observing but same here in Southampton. I thought it was a little extreme getting up at 2am in mid-June & still early hours In August but now I’m glad that I did. 

In Southampton the forecast is for 100% cloud cover with possible drizzle later on

1 hour ago, Alien 13 said:

A lot of people do get put off EQ mounts but as said polar aligning can be simple and quick for visual and I certainly prefer these mounts for Lunar or Planetary observing and with a simple RA motor it will keep the object in the FOV for several minutes or more. Even a basic rough and ready set up will allow for some quick Planetary imaging or even a few minutes of widefield imaging with a DSLR and 50mm lens.

Alan

As Alan says.

I’ve been into this for less than a year but I now have a Skywatcher 1145p on a wobbly EQ1 with a cheap motor drive and a Skywatcher 200p Dob. 

Occasionally I’ll prefer the 1145p, especially for lunar and open clusters. Eg with lunar I can keep the moon in view, even at high magnification. This has been useful when pointing out lunar features to my daughter without the faff of having what we are observing drifting. When she wanted to know where some of the Apollo landing sites were I even attached the phone, put it on live video view and pointed out the sites on the screen. Then back to the eyepiece. All without having to nudge anything. And if the view remains steady you can often relax and see more.

At first an EQ mount can seem a confusing faff. But once you practice and get use to the setup it becomes second nature.

I haven’t got a PC which means no stacking for me. 

This is my second go at taking a video of Jupiter with my phone camera. With the likes of Jupiter and Saturn, taking a frame from video seems to produce better results than trying to taking a single shot with the camera. But that might just be me.

Seeing was good to very good. Skywatcher Skyliner 200p with BST StarGuider 5mm. Video 4K at 60 fps with standard camera app, zoomed at 1.7x on a regular iPhone 12. 

Later manually selecting what looked like the best frame, taking a snapshot (for simplicity & speed) and editing in the standard iPhone camera app & Lightroom, zooming in a little cropping and resizing in Image Size. I like to try and do everything on the phone. 

The result doesn’t match up to the experience of observing last night but I didn’t expect that. At least the black dot that is Ganymede can be seen!

Nice images. And the moon isn’t in an ideal position at the moment.

14 minutes ago, Kon said:

Nice report. I agree seeing was very good last night with a lot of details on Jupiter. You seem to have very nice observing spot up on the hill.

I may have spotted the same one, a very bright one around 11pm in Cygnus that lasted for a couple of secs. 

Yes, I also saw a meteor at the same time and place. I’d put money on it being the same one!

Just popped in for a quick coffee. For once I have good seeing here in Southampton. My experience has been much as @Stu describes. 

Don’t worry! I think it’s good that you’ve posted your experience and effort. Amongst other things it gives people starting out a feel that it’s not that simple. And Jupiter, Saturn too, is very tricky with just a single shot using any camera. 

Surprisingly steady here in Southampton. But plagued by high clouds and iffy seeing. At one point Jupiter completely disappeared, then reappeared about 5 mins later. But I could see the shadow and occasionally seeing would suddenly go good for a few seconds at a time. At the end I could also see Io close to Jupiter plus the shadow which was nice.

I haven’t given the moon a good look in a while and with the moon getting higher in the sky the views are generally getting clearer.

I took this yesterday morning at the end of a Saturn and Jupiter watch. Seeing reasonable but could have been better. The Sea of Crises (love that name) looked beautiful up towards the terminator at higher magnified. And best to make the most of the conditions. If the forecast is to believed there’s a change something more autumnal with cloudy and showery weather next week. 

Skywatcher Skyliner 200p, sIngle shot, iPhone 12, basic smartphone mount, 12mm BST Starguider, standard camera app, small about of editing in app.

Similar here in Southampton. Looks clear, Saturn & Jupiter very bright but not a patch on yesterday. No wobbles but the views are hazy. Yesterday I could get 300x on Jupiter. Tonight 170x. There’s also a lot of dew.

Some of the best seeing in Southampton for Jupiter and Saturn that I’ve had since I started looking at these two at the start of June. Yet the night before was complete rubbish with a ton of wobble. How quickly things change!
 

@Nik271 - I know what you mean about that darkish band on Saturn. I hadn’t seen it like that before and assumed it was shadow. But I think you might be correct in that it was the inner c-ring. It was quite obvious too. 
 

Also had a quick look at although the moon at the end of the session. Although it was nearly full I got some excellent steady views of craters and mountains along the edge. I haven’t seen the moon like that in a while. And of course the moon is starting to get higher in the sky which helps. 

Thee wobbles I had yesterday are all gone  And my daughter is staying up too even though it’s a school night. Ah well!

Much better here in Southampton tonight. Well, so far!