M42 with Google Pixel 6 Pro

[Stu]

Having seen examples of the capabilities of Google Pixel phones for long exposure imaging, I fancied giving one a go. I bought a used Pixel 6 Pro in as new condition for a decent price, and tonight was able to give it a try out.

I setup the Rowan Astronomy AZ100 Goto mount on Planet tripod with my FC100 and a 24mm Panoptic. I used my Televue FoneMate mount, unusual for me as I normally hand hold the phone.

The process is very easy, connect and align the phone to the eyepiece, centenary and focus the image, and select NightSight mode. As soon as the phone is absolutely still, it switches to long exposure mode (the shutter button switches from a crescent moon icon to stars), then you just press the shutter and off you go. Quite amazing.

[Chriske]

one word : A-MA-ZING...!!

[dave34]

Outstanding, it really amazes me what can be done with mobiles these days, WELL DONE Stu.

[PeterStudz]

Brilliant! I should really give my new phone a go. 

[Elp]

That's a very good result.

[Kon]

The Orion is stunning for a mobile. I see you are dipping your feet, not toes anymore, into AP😂...new AP purchases soon 🤪

[Stu]

2 hours ago, Kon said:

The Orion is stunning for a mobile. I see you are dipping your feet, not toes anymore, into AP😂...new AP purchases soon 🤪

I think this is as deep as I get! I don’t have any desire to get into flats/darks/stacking on a pc, so the convenience of the Google NightSight mode really suits me.

[cajen2]

On 18/01/2023 at 00:00, Stu said:

Having seen examples of the capabilities of Google Pixel phones for long exposure imaging, I fancied giving one a go. I bought a used Pixel 6 Pro in as new condition for a decent price, and tonight was able to give it a try out.

I setup the Rowan Astronomy AZ100 Goto mount on Planet tripod with my FC100 and a 24mm Panoptic. I used my Televue FoneMate mount, unusual for me as I normally hand hold the phone.

The process is very easy, connect and align the phone to the eyepiece, centenary and focus the image, and select NightSight mode. As soon as the phone is absolutely still, it switches to long exposure mode (the shutter button switches from a crescent moon icon to stars), then you just press the shutter and off you go. Quite amazing.

Gorgeous result, Stu. Do you know how long the exposure was?

[Stu]

10 minutes ago, cajen2 said:

Gorgeous result, Stu. Do you know how long the exposure was?

Thank you 😊 

Once you select NightSight mode and the phone is perfectly still, the phone enters astrophotography mode and will then take a 4 minute and 2 second exposure, composed of 16 second subs stacked together. Apparently the first two seconds are used to nail focus and understand what exposure settings are needed.

[Mart29]

On 18/01/2023 at 00:00, Stu said:

Having seen examples of the capabilities of Google Pixel phones for long exposure imaging, I fancied giving one a go. I bought a used Pixel 6 Pro in as new condition for a decent price, and tonight was able to give it a try out.

I setup the Rowan Astronomy AZ100 Goto mount on Planet tripod with my FC100 and a 24mm Panoptic. I used my Televue FoneMate mount, unusual for me as I normally hand hold the phone.

The process is very easy, connect and align the phone to the eyepiece, centenary and focus the image, and select NightSight mode. As soon as the phone is absolutely still, it switches to long exposure mode (the shutter button switches from a crescent moon icon to stars), then you just press the shutter and off you go. Quite amazing.

Stunning images,  Stu! Well impressed 👏 

[Stu]

Slight tweak in processing, may be better?

[Alien 13]

Nice work, without going down the rabbit hole of AP I do feel there is a real need for a small tracking mount dedicated for use with mobile phones. I have a dedicated video rig complete with external mics and a tiny pan tilt mount simply because of the advancements in phone technology..

Alan

[Sunshine]

What? this was done with a cell phone?! I would have done backflips if I had done this with a full on imaging rig! I'm a little knocked over by the result. This is all the convincing I need to get one of these phones used just for this purpose!. Is there one particular google phone that is better than others for this type of work? I will check them out. You say you were using a goto mount, were you tracking? also, is the exposure time set or is that adjustable.

Edited January 19, 2023 by Sunshine

[IB20]

Unreal result @Stu. My wife has the Pixel 6 base phone and the camera is insanely good so the Pro’s camera will be the real deal. I would have gone for Pixel were not my accounts all tied up with iPhone. Cheers for the ProCamera app tip too, it’s extremely good and the processing tools are excellent too.

[Ratlet]

I've struggled to get my pixel 6 to work at the eyepiece but I'm for sure going to try again now with a proper holder.

Going to be honest as well that after I've processed my ap images I'll often put them through the pixel 6 built in software and it does a good job getting a bit more range out of it too.

[Stu]

4 hours ago, Alien 13 said:

Nice work, without going down the rabbit hole of AP I do feel there is a real need for a small tracking mount dedicated for use with mobile phones. I have a dedicated video rig complete with external mics and a tiny pan tilt mount simply because of the advancements in phone technology..

Alan

Would one of the AstroTrackers work well for this sort of application? When just using the phone on its own, it works reasonably well without tracking.

4 hours ago, Sunshine said:

What? this was done with a cell phone?! I would have done backflips if I had done this with a full on imaging rig! I'm a little knocked over by the result. This is all the convincing I need to get one of these phones used just for this purpose!. Is there one particular google phone that is better than others for this type of work? I will check them out. You say you were using a goto mount, were you tracking? also, is the exposure time set or is that adjustable.

Yes, with a phone! Amazing isn’t it?

I bought a used Google Pixel 6 Pro, not quite the latest but good enough and a decent price. I’m only intending to use it for Astro imaging, nothing else.

I’m not an expert, but can only assume that the latest version (7 Pro?) would be even better.

I was using a Rowan Astronomy AZ100 mount with the Goto kit, no guiding and just a fairly basic alignment. I’m sure I could possibly improve on it with more accurate alignment. No EQ, auto guiding or anything fancy. In fact an basic alt az tracking mount will do the job.

The exposure time is fixed. As soon as the phone is perfectly still and in NightSight mode, it switches into an astrophotography mode which takes a 4 minute and 2 second exposure made up of 16 second subs which it stacks. I’m not sure what it does in terms of aligning them, but it does need the mount to do basic tracking.

3 hours ago, IB20 said:

Unreal result @Stu. My wife has the Pixel 6 base phone and the camera is insanely good so the Pro’s camera will be the real deal. I would have gone for Pixel were not my accounts all tied up with iPhone. Cheers for the ProCamera app tip too, it’s extremely good and the processing tools are excellent too.

I think (but am not sure) that the 6 will have the long exposure mode as well. Set it to NightSight mode and then mount it to the scope or prop it up somewhere and the long exposure mode will be enabled (the moon icon on the shutter will change to stars). Holding it steady won’t work, it needs to be mounted.

As said, I bought the Pixel specifically for this, I’m sticking to Apple for everything else.

ProCam is excellent isn’t it? It’s the best capture app I’ve used, works great for Lunar, Solar and planetary images.

2 hours ago, Ratlet said:

I've struggled to get my pixel 6 to work at the eyepiece but I'm for sure going to try again now with a proper holder.

Going to be honest as well that after I've processed my ap images I'll often put them through the pixel 6 built in software and it does a good job getting a bit more range out of it too.

The full NightSight mode won’t enable unless the phone is mounted, or at least perfectly still. The processing capabilities do seem to pretty remarkable don’t they?

[Elp]

I think nightsight for AP works the same across Pro, non pro and A versions. Earlier versions of pixel I think from v3 were limited to 1 minute total. What would be interesting is if you took a few, and stacked them together.

 

[pipnina]

21 hours ago, Stu said:

I think this is as deep as I get! I don’t have any desire to get into flats/darks/stacking on a pc, so the convenience of the Google NightSight mode really suits me.

I have gone down this route, and sadly even if you go through the effort it's not worth it:

The camera in the pixel6 (at least the wide angle one, I only have the normal version not the pro) has terrible coma and concentric rings of distortion. It also suffers from internal reflections and has very strong dark noise and hot pixels. Mind this was when I attempted it when night time temps were still 15c, not freezing!

The end result is that you hit a brick wall fast, I'll find my attempt that took a lot of working out to get right, and even then it's not as good as I would have liked for I believe 2 hours of data!

 

Edit: Here's what I achieved using the p6 by itself and a star tracker, using deepskycamera app and pixinsight. This used several hundred gigabytes of hard drive space and hours if processing so I think the result is a bit disappointing. Best to stick to the inbuilt 4 minute timer I guess! 

 

Edited January 20, 2023 by pipnina

[Stu]

21 minutes ago, pipnina said:

I have gone down this route, and sadly even if you go through the effort it's not worth it:

The camera in the pixel6 (at least the wide angle one, I only have the normal version not the pro) has terrible coma and concentric rings of distortion. It also suffers from internal reflections and has very strong dark noise and hot pixels. Mind this was when I attempted it when night time temps were still 15c, not freezing!

The end result is that you hit a brick wall fast, I'll find my attempt that took a lot of working out to get right, and even then it's not as good as I would have liked for I believe 2 hours of data!

 

Edit: Here's what I achieved using the p6 by itself and a star tracker, using deepskycamera app and pixinsight. This used several hundred gigabytes of hard drive space and hours if processing so I think the result is a bit disappointing. Best to stick to the inbuilt 4 minute timer I guess! 

 

That’s why I don’t go down the full AP route

Out of interest, have you tried stacking the 4 minute subs? I believe these eliminate hot pixels so I think you may get much better results?

[pipnina]

3 hours ago, Stu said:

That’s why I don’t go down the full AP route

Out of interest, have you tried stacking the 4 minute subs? I believe these eliminate hot pixels so I think you may get much better results?

It does produce a cleaner image for sure, but it also does cause some artifacts on stars (they tend to go odd colours) and it means you need to sit there with the phone hitting the shutter button every 4 minutes- deep sky camera lets you take about 30-40 mins worth at a time.

That said, I did find a way of controlling my phone from my pc indoors so it might be tolerable if I tried it again.

In the end these phones are impressive for jack-of-all-trades devices but I think you'll agree that we mostly image with them from curiosity or necessity and not because we expect greatness!

[Stu]

9 minutes ago, pipnina said:

not because we expect greatness!

🤣🤣 indeed. A great imager I will never be! 🤣🤣

That said, my previous ‘best’ was this one, a 10s exposure with an iPhone 6 Pro on a 7” Mak.

 

Going back further you have the first winning StuPOD entry, which is an even more stunning image! 🤣🤣

 

So, in the grand scheme of those images, this latest one does represent a form of greatness 😉

[PeterStudz]

These are outstanding images! Well done @Stu And it goes go to show that things are coming along fast. 

And this does remind me… I am a visual observer. But I’ll sometimes use my phone as a tool for visual. Eg when I take an image it’s usually as an aid to record what I’ve seen, maybe to share the event with my daughter. All I want is to snap and shot with no or minimal processing or manipulations. This sort of phone feature seams ideal for me! Although I’m unlikely go out and buy a phone just for this. Mind you, out of curiosity and/or to pass some time, maybe see what the phone can do, I will sometimes do some basic image processing on the phone. I’ll also use my phone plus app for PushTo, and to orientate and level my EQ platform. 

Edited January 27, 2023 by PeterStudz

[fullmoon]

Wow, these are amazing views!! 

[bosun21]

On 20/01/2023 at 10:47, pipnina said:

The camera in the pixel6 (at least the wide angle one, I only have the normal version not the pro) has terrible coma and concentric rings of distortion.

Can’t you just put a piece of tape over the wide field camera leaving the 50MP one to capture the image?

[bosun21]

This gave me the incentive to buy a refurbished Pixel 6 pro. I’ve still to try it in earnest though. I could swear I already posted here about this and I can’t even find the post in my history. Senility creeping in perhaps!