first moon shot

[vexinstar]

well, last night in the early hours of the morning on my way back from a halloween party i noticed it was a rather clear sky (clearest its been in about a week) so i thought i would take my scope out an have a look about, got a couple of good views on jupiter and 3 of its moon is all i could see, i guess the other was behind the planet itself.

i then moved on to the moon though i have not yet got a moon filter, and the moon was rather bright, it was a great sight, a lot of craters visible down the terminator line. i decided to take a couple of piccies with my iphone, though i wasnt expecting much, i was plesently surprised with the quality, since i was just holding the camera to the eyepiece, and with out a lunar filter, not to mention being rather drunk and wobbly, and well heres the result

would the pictures look a lot better with a lunar filter? it was really hard trying to get rid of the glare ut i am happy with the result so far

[Welrod50]

Not bad for a wobbly drunk with an iPhone

I think to be honest this is as good as it will get, taking into account hand movement, iPhone lens quality and the lack of filter. You can shoot well enough without a moon filter as you can drop exposure times depending on what set up you use. I photograph the moon without a filter, although you may have more success with one if you want to just carry on doing the afocal photographing with the iphone. I'm not sure you have full manual control over your photography with the iphone camera.

Just out of interest, is your scope a refractor?

Good effort

[vexinstar]

my scope is a reflector, the skywatcher explorer 130 (no parabolic mirror or motor). im happy with these kinds of pictures for now, as they still show a lot of detail, the only thing is,

a lot of the pictures were just over come with glare, and just looked like a big bright white ball.

i was looking at some cameras, but they are quite expensive, and since i am new to the hobby, thought it be best not to buy one yet.

i have invested in another eyepiece, an 18mm.

these pictures were taken with 25mm barlowed, (i think)

i also got a shot of jupiter, but that too looks like a white ball with 3 dots round it (wasnt expecting much atall really with a with a picture of jupiter nut it turned out a bit better than i had hoped)

[Welrod50]

I have exactly the same scope. I suspect the purple fringing is from the barlow then. You don't need expensive cameras to be able to take photographs, particularly the moon. If you have a small compact camera you can do it, particularly if you can manually control aperture/exposure time. You could buy an adapter which attaches to the eyepiece and has a moveable base plate which screws onto the camera tripod thread underneath - I can't remember the proper name for them, but most retailers sell them for around the £30 mark. Then have a crack at afocal photography, but be warned - once the bug bites that's it !!

As for the glare, take the cap off your tube's protective cover when viewing the moon. It will drop the brightness down nicely.