Advice on iPhone astrophotography

[JCdeBoer]

Hi,

I am relatively new to astrophotography and as a student, I'm on a tight budget. Nevertheless I was curious to see how far I could get without investing boatloads of money into my new found hobby

So far I've modded an xbox webcam and used it to take some shots of the moon, jupiter and mars (Tried orion nebula as well, but I couldn't get any nebulosity on cam. If its possible to capture the orion nebula using an xbox cam, please tell me ). But my real goal is to see how far I can get using an iPhone 5s camera afocally attached by a DIY adapter. The main thing I am struggling with is the lack of the ability to take long exposure shots. This is because first, I don't have a tracking system and second, even a 2 sec exposure photo made with the slow shutter cam app contains way too much noise.

The following shots of Jupiter and the Orion Nebula are the best I took as of yet and I would really like some advice on how to make better shots using my iPhone :

https://www.flickr.com/photos/jcdeboer/13130174125/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/jcdeboer/13128931545/

The files are both a little over 1MB so I guess this is the easiest way to share them.

Regards,

JCdeBoer

[Langy]

I think the only way you stand a chance of getting any detail is with shorter exposure times and stack the images. However as they will not be in RAW format the amount of detail you can pull out may be limited.

[JCdeBoer]

Thanks for the reply Langy.

The photos are indeed small stacks, jupiter of the standard 1/15 sec and orion of 2 sec. The cmos chip in the iphone causes huge amounts of noise which is then pretty much inremovable because it's jpeg. Earlier I stacked about 400 frames taken with 1/15 sec, but I couldn't get any nebulosity outside the trapezium. I guess that stacking 900 1/15 sec frames wouldn't come close to a single 60sec exposure right?

Also, what would be the max that could be pulled out of an xbox camera when it comes to DSO's? Any chance at seeing anything?

[Langy]

I'm not sure as they don't take long exposures which is why they are geared up to be used for lunar and planetary work.

Even with a DSLR you need to shoot in RAW to bring out detail.

[1CM69]

I am struggling with this as well.

I have seen masses of amazing images of the ISS streaking across the shot, all taken using the Slow Shutter Cam iOS app by Cogitap Software.

I have tried numerous times to take low light shots using this app with my iPhone5 and just like you have said, you are either plagued by noise but more-so I have issues with purple tingeing to the image.

Can't seem to get a handle on using the app correctly.

[JCdeBoer]

Yep I get the red/purple hue as well. Photographing nebulae gives actually very nice nebulosity in the image, but the image is worthless due to the huge amount of noise (see image).

I pretty much gave up on it. Still interested in suggested solutions tho...

[JCdeBoer]

You may try to subtract a dark frame but since all the images are jpeg, the correlation in the noise will be allmost gone. So I doubt its effectiveness.