First Moon Attempt

[Mikel56]

Hello,

I haven’t been in contact for sometime but still read ! Many thanks for your help last year.

Tonight was a good night here so for the first time I’ve managed to take a couple of moon photographs. Apart from the telescope (Celestron9.25) my equipment and skills are basic. 
 

The attached photographs were taken using an iPhone SE  with a Celestron “holder” for positioning the iPhone over the eyepiece. The photographs are only “single shot” as I haven’t much of a clue about stacking frames. 
 

The eyepiece was 8.6mm and a mount with no goto.

I’ve learned the moon travels fastish and my focussing needs practice !
 

Regards

Edited May 18 by Mikel56
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[LukeTheNuke]

Well done, far better than my phone efforts! (I'm too embarrassed to post them here). And thanks for showing the setup, that's interesting to see. I'm surprised to see the gap between the phone and the eyepiece. With my efforts, I've manually held the phone right up to the eyepiece. It didn't even occur to me to have some distance between the phone and eyepiece.

[Mikel56]

The photograph showing the setup was taken at the same time as the photograph of the telescope (with the moon shown in the iPhone).

The setup then included a 19 mm eyepiece, 2x Barlow and a fine focus all on to a right angle thingy. The “gap” was a consequence of the 3d holder and was in that position whilst moon in focus. The actual moon photographs were with an 8.6 m eyepiece,

Regards

[paulastro]

Those are great first efforts, look forward to seeing more.

[LondonNeil]

How did you find the holder to work for you? Well and easily or tricky?  End result looks good. 

[Mikel56]

Hello Neil,

The holder isn’t of the best engineering quality however far superior to the cheap ones you can buy online. The holder in the photograph operates in three dimensions with three separate controls. Only took a minute or so to get the moon centred on the iPhone with a previously focussed telescope .

The clamp fits around the knurled part of the eyepiece and accommodates different eyepiece external diameters.

There’s still a slight movement to the setup but once working there’s no need to touch anything so the unit remains steady. I used the iPhone timer however without the timer, pressing the button gently, the photos turned out with no noticeable difference to my eye.

There’s an app. called AstroShader. Apparently this app allows you to take several photographs and “stacks” them automatically. It’s a free download so I’ll give that a try weather permitting.

Bottomline the holder was a good buy for my basic skills/knowledge. 
 

I noticed there are two similar holders. Mine is the Celestron. I noticed the other is cheaper but I suspect it’s a Chinese copy. Might be ok though,

The attached photograph was taken with a 6mm eyepiece. I think that is at the telescope limit or my focus was rubbish !

Regards

[Mikel56]

Forgot to add the difficult part for me was focussing. A slight touch on telescope focus control and the “picture” jumped about. I think I need a hands free focus unit, something like that,

Regards

[LondonNeil]

Great,  i think I'll try it.  It's in aliexpress for £24 delivered (although I think there are probably taxes to add)  and that is marked as the celestron 

[PeterStudz]

Nice and thanks for posting!

When using an iPhone it’ll help no end with focusing if you enable AE/AF LOCK. Without it enabled and even if you have focus spot on, the camera will hunt around for what it thinks is best focus - it’s not designed to image through an eyepiece.

To enable AE/AF LOCK long press the screen when in the camera app until the yellow square appears. Then manually focus when enabled. This also allows you to control exposure - there’s a little slider on the side. You can also lock it to focus on areas of the screen. 

AstroShader isn’t much help with lunar. But it’s good with DSO.

 

Edited May 16 by PeterStudz

[Mikel56]

Hello,

For the four attached I used the same single frame setup as above attached to a Swift 831 with a 6mm lens. Again I think that would be the limit for the telescope,

Regards

[Mikel56]

Thanks Peter. I should have read your post before the four photographs above !

Regards

[PeterStudz]

On 16/05/2024 at 23:47, Mikel56 said:

Hello,

For the four attached I used the same single frame setup as above attached to a Swift 831 with a 6mm lens. Again I think that would be the limit for the telescope,

Regards

It’s looks like you’ve hit the focus on those just about spot on anyway! I’d say that any “blur” is down to the seeing on the night. Getting a night with good seeing will make a lot of difference, especially for a single shot - keep it going! 

[Mikel56]

Thanks Peter. I’m waiting for a clear night ! Next time, hopefully by midweek, I plan to use an iPhone with a better camera. Should make a difference, I think.

I’d like to take same photograph, same time and with same equipment of the moon using the Celestron and Swift in order to compare. I think it would be fair to aim for 100x so that design parameters not compromised for either. Thereafter enlarge to same viewing/display size for both. I’m not sure if there’s much to be gained however if the Celestron is my benchmark I would like to see a like for like Swift “effort”. From what my layman’s eye tells me it appears my old Swift performs,

Regards

Edited May 18 by Mikel56