gizmo to transmit image to phone or laptop

[kevineaton77]

Hi hope you are well. 

I'm looking for a ccd gizmo that will attach to my scope and either usb or wifi the image to my phone or a laptop. so i can get my kds intersted- they really struggle with eyepeices.   i've tried a physical phone attaching device and it was terrible. I've seen the bresser HD but (on amazon at least) some of the feedback is that it is not great. My scope is a celestron nexstar 4" refractor. 

all advice gratefully received!

 

thanks in advance. 

[Davey-T]

There are various USB eyepieces and video cameras that will do this.

Dave

[kevineaton77]

thanks, I figured there would be  - do you have any recommendations? I have 150 quid to spend, preferably less. 

[Cosmic Geoff]

You could get an ASI120MC-S for £150.

I should point out that the field of view you get will be similar to that of a 5mm eyepiece - maybe not what you were expecting. 

If you own a DSLR with a large operating screen and LiveView you could try attaching that.

[vlaiv]

Unfortunately - there is no such gizmo - at least not cheap option.

There is whole section of SGL dedicated to this kind of observing - it is called EEVA (electronically enhanced visual astronomy).

As already mentioned - you can get various 1.25" electronic eyepieces / cameras - but these tend to be best for planets due to small FOV.

If you want to show them the Moon and planets - that is a good option. With your scope, something like ASI120 will give views like this:

So it will show close up of the moon, you can even check out some YouTube videos to get the idea:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k15ErQGVt4M

That one is also 4" scope - although a bit different than yours but I believe FOV should be roughly similar.

Btw, surprisingly good results can be obtained with smart phone at eyepiece, check this out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Kxjb9wtTzE

For deep sky objects, things are not as easy - you need to do something called live stacking. Here you need to take longer exposures (like 10-20 seconds) and target appears after a few minutes. Here - larger sensor is better.

This is field of view with ASI120 and your scope on M42 - only central core is seen. You also need suitable software to do this and lap top of course.

[kevineaton77]

thanks to everyone who advised , particularly Vlaiv for that very comprehensive answer. planets and moon is great for my kids - the ASI120 looks good. is there anything a bit more expensive that is going to be much better? i could stretch a little if its worth it. 

[kevineaton77]

or is it worth buying a bridge camera / dslr instead? kill two birds with one stone...

[vlaiv]

If planetary / real time is what you are after - than ASI120 will be sufficient for everything but putting whole Moon into frame.

Planets are really small and will all fit in field of view of ASI120 or similar camera with room to spare.

Unless you have plans on expanding further into EEVA and trying to capture deep sky objects - ASI120 will suffice. Maybe think of adding 1.25" x0.5 reducer for when you are "looking" at the moon.

In fact, two accessories that I would recommend with ASI120 for watching live stream of the planets would be:

1. x2 barlow when observing anything but the moon

2. x0.5 focal reducer when observing the moon

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/reducersflatteners/astro-essentials-05x-1-25-focal-reducer.html

With it you should be able to see the whole moon in frame:

[kevineaton77]

possibly looking at buying new scope now as well!! 5 inch makatov skywatcher....thoughts?

[vlaiv]

52 minutes ago, kevineaton77 said:

or is it worth buying a bridge camera / dslr instead? kill two birds with one stone...

I would recommend second hand DSLR as means to get into EEVA - on deep sky objects.

That is much more fiddly proposal than getting dedicated astro camera as you need to use specialist drivers to make DSLR (connected with USB cable to your computer) act like dedicated astro camera. It is also much cheaper as you can get second hand Canon 450D for less than £100 and suitable astronomy cameras start from £500 and upward (those that are less expensive will be same as ASI120 for DSO use - very small field of view - so you might as well use ASI120 instead for that as well).

You also need to install quite a bit of support software - ASCOM and such.

In any case, here is ascom driver for Canon DSLR cameras: https://github.com/vtorkalo/ASCOM.DSLR/tree/master

(there is pre build exe in file list, so you don't have to build it yourself - there is also link to install procedure description).

[vlaiv]

2 minutes ago, kevineaton77 said:

possibly looking at buying new scope now as well!! 5 inch makatov skywatcher....thoughts?

For planets - that is excellent option. You won't be able to fit the moon, with or without reducer on ASI120 - it will be just too much zoomed in.

You won't need barlow on the planets - so that is a plus.

Here is what you can expect to see at one time - green without reducer, blue with x0.5 reducer

This scope will be much worse option for deep sky objects EEVA / live stacking, even with DSLR due to too much "zoom in".

[kevineaton77]

hi all, thanks for the continued help.

i've just found an olympus camedia e20-n in my loft....would this be any good for imaging / live view?

[vlaiv]

Out of interest - what was wrong with attaching phone to the telescope?

After participating in this discussion I took some interest in the topic of using mobile phones as a platform for EEVA and while reviewing little finder/guider scope that just arrived - I realized that quite decent image can be had with mobile phone attached to the eyepiece properly.

Here is image that I snapped hand held - both finder scope and my mobile phone. It looks decent (that is brick wall of neighbor's house).

[rickwayne]

On 23/12/2020 at 07:06, kevineaton77 said:

hi all, thanks for the continued help.

i've just found an olympus camedia e20-n in my loft....would this be any good for imaging / live view?

I suspect that a recent cell phone would actually work better -- easier to handle, probably just as many megapixels, network-enabled out of the box, and a sensor with more recent technology. Not to mention that you might very find a holder gizmo that will keep your cell steady behind the telescope.

If you had something like a DSLR where you could remove the lens and mount it to your scope, then we'd be talkin'.