Budget lunar camera

[MarkBass]

Hi.

Recently joined here and hope I can get some advice. I bought an 8" dob as I like finding my own way around the night sky and don't really want to get into AP. I also have a keen interest in the moon.

Although I'm enjoying what I'm doing I would like to take some photos of the moon using my dob so invested in a decent smartphone holder. This is the celestron one and I have a Samsung S8+. I'm having real trouble lining my phone up with the eyepiece to the point where it's really frustrating. I am now looking at a dedicated camera that will fit into the eyepiece and have looked at

Bresser Mikrokular £50

Bresser Wi-Fi Camera £90

ZWO ASI120M-c £130

I would be grateful if anyone could give me advice on what would be most value for money of the above for lunar images. 

Or should I continue trying with my S8 as it's a good camera or buy a cheap used DSLR.

 

Thanks in advance 

[vlaiv]

14 minutes ago, MarkBass said:

Hi.

Recently joined here and hope I can get some advice. I bought an 8" dob as I like finding my own way around the night sky and don't really want to get into AP. I also have a keen interest in the moon.

Although I'm enjoying what I'm doing I would like to take some photos of the moon using my dob so invested in a decent smartphone holder. This is the celestron one and I have a Samsung S8+. I'm having real trouble lining my phone up with the eyepiece to the point where it's really frustrating. I am now looking at a dedicated camera that will fit into the eyepiece and have looked at

Bresser Mikrokular £50 

Bresser Wi-Fi Camera £90

ZWO ASI120M-c £130

I would be grateful if anyone could give me advice on what would be most value for money of the above for lunar images. 

Or should I continue trying with my S8 as it's a good camera or buy a cheap used DSLR.

 

Thanks in advance 

Depend on how serious you are at taking images.

First two look rather interesting - but no information on sensor is given. Looking at the specs for both cameras, I suspect that they are based on web cam technology, meaning compression is used to push the data either via USB2.0 or Wifi. This will seriously limit planetary performance of these devices. You will be able to take single shots, or even multiple shots and stack them, but due to loosy nature of compression used - you might get artifacts in your images.

When I started doing AP and planetary I used similar setup - DIY web camera converted into astro camera. It was actually working pretty OK, but I switched to dedicated astro camera after just couple of months and got much better results. My first astro camera was very similar to ZWO ASI120 (same sensor, but different vendor - QHY5LIIc).

Since you say that you will be using your dob - here is one serious concern - you will be extremely limited by your dob mount. This mount is non tracking (unless you have goto version of dob - then you are perfectly fine and skip following text) and if you use such a small sensor - you will have trouble getting target on sensor, and you will have very limited time to do recording. This is something to consider. EQ platform can help there, but it's not cheap, unless you do DIY one (there are schematics on internet), even then it's not very cheap.

 

[Cosmic Geoff]

I tried imaging the Moon with a budget video camera (Neximage) but was not impressed by the results, so bought an ASI120MC, a fine camera used by many planetary imagers.  A Dob is really not suitable for planetary imaging, and if you want better than 'moon snaps' you need a driven mount, either GoTo or equatorial.

[Stu]

What sort of problems are you having linng up the smartphone on the mount Mark? Is it the NeXYZ mount you have? These are quite good but can be a bit fiddly. I tend to think that the smartphone will give better results unless you are stacking videos, and even then you can stack smartphone videos on a pc too.

Can you post some images of the mount and eyepiece you are using it on so I can maybe help a little? One piece of advice is to attached the mount and phone to the eyepiece before putting it in the scope. If you aim at a light then you can more easily see when the image is fully illuminated as you adjust it. Then put the pre aligned eyepiece/mount/smartphone into the scope.

There are some small screws on the mount which you can tighten up to stop it moving unintentionally.

[MarkBass]

31 minutes ago, Stu said:

What sort of problems are you having linng up the smartphone on the mount Mark? Is it the NeXYZ mount you have? These are quite good but can be a bit fiddly. I tend to think that the smartphone will give better results unless you are stacking videos, and even then you can stack smartphone videos on a pc too.

Can you post some images of the mount and eyepiece you are using it on so I can maybe help a little? One piece of advice is to attached the mount and phone to the eyepiece before putting it in the scope. If you aim at a light then you can more easily see when the image is fully illuminated as you adjust it. Then put the pre aligned eyepiece/mount/smartphone into the scope.

There are some small screws on the mount which you can tighten up to stop it moving unintentionally.

Thanks. Yes it is the NexYZ.  It's a good piece of kit but I just find it fiddly to line it all up. Maybe I just need to practise more. I have 6, 10, 15 and 25mm eyepieces so not sure which is best to use but assume the wider ones.

I am aware the Dob is not ideal for AP and like I said in my post I knew that when I bought it. I don't have the interest or money for serious AP so just wanted to take some shots of the moon. I think I will keep practising with my Samsung and NexYZ 

 

Thanks

 

[fwm891]

Do as Stu say try aligning the eyepiece and mounting off the scope first. You can do all this in daylight rather than trying to adjust things at night. Then hopefully once you have a clear night you can simply pop the eyepiece in and adjust the focus...

[Stu]

13 minutes ago, MarkBass said:

Thanks. Yes it is the NexYZ.  It's a good piece of kit but I just find it fiddly to line it all up. Maybe I just need to practise more. I have 6, 10, 15 and 25mm eyepieces so not sure which is best to use but assume the wider ones.

I am aware the Dob is not ideal for AP and like I said in my post I knew that when I bought it. I don't have the interest or money for serious AP so just wanted to take some shots of the moon. I think I will keep practising with my Samsung and NexYZ 

 

Thanks

 

It's normally easier to practise with a longer focal length eyepiece and get the hang of it before going to higher powers. The shorter local length eyepieces tend to have smaller exit lenses and shorter bodies so are harder to clamp to and align.

It is perfectly possible to get decent results with a non driven dob. I often hand hold my phone to the eyepiece of a refractor on a manual mount and it works fine, particularly for the moon. For single shots it is fine, only short exposures are required.