My first iPhone footage of Jupiter

[Altitude]

It was about a week ago. I went outside and noticed in the sky two bright stars. My astronomy "expertise" told me to grab my iPad and see through an astronomical app what am I looking at. It was Venus and Jupiter. Since work and family hijacked completely my time I had limited access to my telescope... This time I quickly dragged my simple 6" Newtonian set up outside.The excitement was overwhelming.

After aiming at Venus, for the first time in my life (don't laugh) I witnessed a distant planet with my own eyes! It was beautiful! It had its surface in about 1/3 shadow. Not very large but very bright and colorful.

Shortly after that I aimed at the Jupiter and could not believe my eyes. While it was smaller in size than Venus, it had clearly visible striped surface and it's four satellites arrangement. Not only that, I could see a tiny dot shadow on the Jupiter's surface casted by one of its satellites.

I took my iPhone and tried to capture what I see, but with no option to adjust exposure, Jupiter in video looks like a bright overexposed Moon.

After all, I spent the rest of my evening staring at this beauties through my Binoviewer until they disappeared behind the hills.

[mikeskor]

Excellent. A magic first capture.

[Hobbes]

Try installing the free "Manually" App  It allows you to manually control ISO, Shutter, Exposure and Focus. I haven't experimented with it for astro photography yet but it looks interesting.

[KE400]

A great capture, it reminds me of my 1st view of Jup too, something you never forget!!!

Congrats

[dwarfnebula]

There is also an app called NightCap that allows you to control and lock the settings. I have not yet made any captures with it but I have a 30 second one similar to Altitude's using the iPhone camera app.

[xtreemchaos]

nice first vid mate,jupiter is a fantastic planet to image.thanks for sharing..charl..

[Polstar_UK]

I used an iPhone last week to take some photos of Venus, Jupiter and Saturn. With Jupiter I had the same exposure issues, it looks very bright but you can see the moons. The iPhone seems to reset focus, lighting etc after each shot also. Will have to try the apps mentioned.

[Altitude]

Thank you for your comments guys.

The iPhone 4 is rather "old" compare to the "6" model (which has a much better camera). Unfortunately the adapter I am using now designed for the iPhone 4. It's very cool piece with little "balancer" that I made to keep my phone in any orientation I want. Will check some apps to twick exposure and maybe new adapter for iPhone 6.

[MarsG76]

Now you done it, it'll only get better and you just find yourself wanting to see more.... like an addiction....