Surprised with my mobile phone pics...

[stev74]

I had a really good night observing into the early hours of 31st August and decided to finish up on the Moon. The seeing was great and I got some stunning views of ridges and craters along the terminator, the Moon was looking really 3D. It was so good in fact, I felt I just had to try and capture the view.

I've only ever done one afocal Moon pic before and it wasn't great but I thought I'd give it another go. So these are the results with my Nokia 5530 mobile phone which only has a 3.2MP camera, held up to my 14mm and 20mm EP's on my 200p. It took me ages to get the Moon to show up on the phone screen to start with but I think it was worth the patience in the end.

I then had a little play about with the images in GIMP which I got on one of the S@N mags discs.

Can anyone tell me the name of the U shaped ridge in the bottom of the pics?

[KevG]

They turned out well, especially considering you used a phone camera. The ridge would be the Apennines

[Euan]

They are really nice and sharp

Do you think someone will make an eyepiece mobile adapter? I don't see why not as most of them are high frame rate and small pixels and would be ideal

[lunator]

Steve

Very good pics

I have done this in the past using an old Nokia 3320.

It is quite amazing what you can achieve.

If you get a chance bump up the magnification up and you should get some nice close up pics.

Cheers

Ian

[Mouse on the Moon]

Nice!

What EP were you using at the time?

[Mouse on the Moon]

Doh! Sorry, it's in your post!

[stev74]

The ridge would be the Apennines

Thanks Kev

Do you think someone will make an eyepiece mobile adapter? I don't see why not as most of them are high frame rate and small pixels and would be ideal

I think that would be a great idea Euan as the main issue I had was trying to get the moon into and then to stay in shot with it hand held.

If you get a chance bump up the magnification up and you should get some nice close up pics.

I'll give it a go next time Ian thanks for the tip.

Thanks all, for the positive comments, I'll definitely be trying this again with the phone. I've also ordered one of the cheap webcams and an adapter so hopefully this is the first of many Moon and hopefully planetary pics that I'll be posting.

Cheers