Category Archives: Astronomy

AstroBlog 2019, outing #17 – Backyard imaging attempts for the Moon, Saturn and some stars

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In my previous posts, I had the same three targets. The moon is easy (ISO24, 1/250s), although the fuller it gets, the more washed out if I don’t use a filter:

And I can see some single frames of Saturn are worse than others (ISO32, 1/10s):

But I was REALLY setting up so I could play with my camera centreing. As I noted in a previous post, the feedback from an online FB group was that my EP wasn’t centred. So I wanted to ensure 100% that I was centred last night. For one of my stars off to the side, defocused into a doughnut, I was clearly NOT centred (screengrab of Night Cap below):

But I moved the stars around a bit in the EP, and managed to get something a little more balanced:

And then BAM, I got this:

Only minor differences in positioning, no difference in my centreing over the EP. The beauty of the adapter I’m using is that it centres on its own (the physical connectors are aligned so they ALWAYS centre properly). Which left me REALLY confused. Does that mean I’m only centred and aligned for that specific spot on the screen? Not out to the edges? I went back to focus, found a single star, tried ISO10K for a short 2s, and got this, a nice little dot:

I tried Altair, and dropped ISO to 8K, while keeping it at 2s:

Under the heading of weird, I dropped exposure to 1/2s, and got this, with a few extra stars poking through more than they did above:

When I increased to 4s, I got some more stars, which makes sense:

I tried another EP, the Hyperion 36mm, and tested my “setup” with a screen grab:

And again, I could find at least one spot that was dead on.

But ISO 10K and a 4s burst? No additional stars. WTF?

So I did same settings again. And got this:

More stars, different sized star capturing. I bopped over to a small open cluster, dropped duration to a single second, and ISO to 8K. And got more stars, but mixed pinpointy and not. Sigh.

Just for fun, I was wondering what would happen if I did a video of the cluster and stacked it. Nothing that useful, apparently.

A second video did NOT stack well at all.

I also tried a video of (I think) Altair again. Then converted in PIPP and stacked in AutoStakkert. After the one above, I wasn’t expecting much. But it actually seemed to work, while limiting it to I think the best 10%:

The little stars aren’t pinpointy, but overall, the image is promising I think. Now I just have to start figuring out why one works and the other one doesn’t.

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AstroBlog 2019, outing #16c – Backyard imaging attempts for stars and clusters

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In my previous two posts, I noted my standard setup for backyard imaging:

  • Celestron NexStar 8SE;
  • stock alt-azimuth mount;
  • an iPhone XS Max phone running Night Cap software;
  • the Phone Skope smartphone adapter; and,
  • a 25mm Celestron Plossl.

My last set of targets for the night was stars. Although my thinking was more like:

Okay, the moon is easy.

I’ve got a handle on planets.

Now I need to figure out how to do stars.

There’s a guy online named Loren Ball who can do an amazing job getting asteroids, and his stars are always pinpoint perfect. His technique is to use a hand-held magnifying glass to get his stars in focus, and then snap away. He sets his iPhone for ISO 8000, does 10s bursts in Night Cap, has documented all the buttons he pushes to do that, and then stacks 18 images in Nebulosity. Easy peasy lemon squeezy, it seems.

Nope, not even close. I had a few early shots about two months ago that I was happy with, and it seemed like I was on the right track. I took a stab at the Lagoon Nebula and got this on June 8th:

But getting back to that point has proven challenging. I thought I would start with a very simple object — Polaris. Nice, big, bright, can’t miss it. I followed Loren’s button-mashing order to the letter, set my ISO to 10K, and reduced duration to just 5s (the recommended time to start with). The brightness can present some challenges with the lighting in the image, not to blow it out, but it’s easy to see on the screen.

And at first blush, I was okay with it. The other stars aren’t pin points, but it seemed okay. Until I posted a few shots online, and people noticed that the “circular” field of view wasn’t quite circular. It’s a bit warped downward to the left. Which apparently meant my camera wasn’t perfectly centred over the eyepiece (although I think it meant my eyepiece was a bit crooked more than the centreing was off — my new adapter pretty much CAN’T be uncentred, it’s molded specifically for my camera, it lines up perfect every time). Loren’s view was that I wasn’t actually at 10K ISO. Except the app said I was, the ExIf data says it is. Not sure how I would know if I wasn’t, or how to check otherwise. Hmm…

M82 showed me a faint galaxy but the stars were elongated:

The stars really showed up as elongated for the Mini Coathanger cluster:

I tried to get clarification online about what those elongated stars meant…I thought I had already reduced the number of variables to focus on technique, as Loren kept saying I was being too complicated. But I had reduced to a single eyepiece, a 25mm Plossl, gives me about 80x magnification which is relatively easy to work with. The new adapter should have given me perfect centreing if I put the lens in right. I used the magnifying glass to pinpoint my stars, so I should have been in focus. So what did elongated stars mean? Did it mean I was getting subtle star trails at 5s?

The response was almost immediate — the centreing was off, so I wasn’t getting flat stars, not a drift / star trail problem. And my focus. Loren repeated, again, that I should use the magnifying glass, but I *had* done that, which I told him, but he kept repeating it, saying I wasn’t listening, and it finally just pissed me off. I had followed his instructions to the letter, even made a checklist to do it. When I’m frustrated, I appreciate someone offering help, but if they’re not listening to what I’ve done and instead just telling me to just do the same thing over again, it moves past help and well nigh into condescension, and just added to my frustration. At that point, I’m better off going on my own because that kind of rote help is not help at all. And to be honest, I’ve found the two groups I was using somewhat unpleasant in recent weeks for some of the conversations in it, maybe it’s the heat. Whatever. I unfollowed four astronomy groups and moved my focus to my own stuff and a couple of email groups I use. One of the guys on FB who was actually quite helpful is offering feedback through DM, so hopefully I’ll figure this out in stages. In the meantime, I’ll share my other results.

A very light M10 globular cluster:

Some of the stars in M18 (an open cluster) were okay:

I like the “W” cluster, but you have to cock your head to the right to see it:

I tried twice for Albireo and the second one split the star properly, but neither were great:

I got a bunch of stars in M39 (open cluster again), but still elongated:

M2, a faint globular cluster, is the type that suggests I’m not actually getting up to 10K for my ISO — there should be other stars in those fields.

I liked the look of Epsilon Pegasus which I hadn’t seen before:

M12, another globular, gave me slightly better detail:

But when I tried stacking it, it didn’t improve anything:

I *really* liked M23, nice big open cluster, lots of stars and not as elongated (but I don’t know why!). Stacking didn’t change the outcome:

The target that Loren had suggested for me to try was M25 since it has so many stars in it. And as soon as I published it, the guys online said “You’re not centred” (see dialogue above). Which is true, obviously. So I need to work on my centreing some more (or more likely, the vertical-ness of the EP in the adapter).

Stacking didn’t do anything to help, even with 20+ pics of 5s each. Need to work on that, but as I said earlier, that’s a later priority. I moved on to the Blue Snowball. And, while I can’t say I got anything amazing, there IS something blue in there:

I tried for the Bubble Nebula, but got nada for the nebula. Even the stars around it aren’t great:

Dumbbell Nebula? Nada. Eagle? Lots of stars, no nebula.

I tried for the Swan Nebula, and I did get a faint bit of fuzziness near the bottom.

For the Veil? Nada. Hmm…Maybe I’m NOT at 10K ISO. Hmm…On the other hand, I looked at the Wild Duck Cluster for the first time. And I think it looks really cool with a lot of potential for the future.

When I figure out the right technique, Wild Duck and M25 will be my test subjects. And maybe the Lagoon Nebula again. See if I can get some more colour.

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AstroBlog 2019, outing #16b – Backyard imaging attempts for planets

The Writing Life of a Tadpole Posted on by  

From my previous post, you’ll see that I was set up in my backyard on Saturday, August 10th, with my Celestron NexStar 8SE, stock alt-azimuth mount, an iPhone XS Max phone running Night Cap software, the Phone Skope smartphone adapter, and a 25mm Celestron Plossl. My second set of targets for the night was planets. The moon was pretty close to Jupiter, so that was a wash, and not that far from Saturn, but I thought I might as well try since I was already out.

With digital zoom maxed out the wazoo (never a great approach to get good results), ISO at 50, and duration at 1/10s, I did a couple of single frames of Saturn. I have to say, while they’re not great, they didn’t completely suck either.

There’s even some colour in there. Shocked me that I could get ANYTHING with digital zoom and so close to the moon, but hey, I’ll take it.

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AstroBlog 2019, outing #16a – Backyard imaging attempts for the moon

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I have blogged previously that I’ve set a goal for myself of figuring out how to work my iPhone to take pics through the telescope, and I’ve had earlier success for the moon. But to be honest? The moon is dead simple. If I set an ISO between 24 and 50, and play with my duration to be between 1/100th of a second to 1/300th of a second, and it’s relatively in focus, I can get “something”. The more moon there is showing, the brighter it is, and it’s easy to get washed out without a filter, but any of the setup problems virtually disappear when it’s the moon.

On Saturday, August 10th, I stuck my head out of my back door, saw the moon and went ahead and set up. As always, I’m setting up a Celestron NexStar 8SE, stock alt-azimuth mount, and an iPhone XS Max phone running Night Cap software. The only “variables” that were up for the night were the new Phone Skope phone adapter that allows you to mount the phone over the eyepiece and my choice of eyepiece, which tonight was a 25mm Celestron Plossl that comes with the 8SE scope. My night was divided into three “target zones” — the moon (below), planets (next blog post) and stars (the blog post after that).

With stock f/1.8 settings, I used ISO 24 and 1/300s to get me this:

That is a straight single frame, no tweaking or adjustment of anything other than flipping it horizontally to correct for my diagonal giving me the mirror image by default. Like I said above, the moon is dead easy.

I tried stacking in Nebulosity, and I have little experience using it on the moon. I made it worse, stacking all the images:

I thought it was my choice of stacking technique, so I went a little more complicated to remove the possibility of rotational errors, and, well, it was even WORSE:

I really don’t need to stack it, the single frames are more than sufficient for now. Post-processing will come, but it’s farther down my priority list.

At the top of the big image, I zoomed in a bit to see the top ridge above Mare Imbrium. It is called Montes Jura, and the little alcove below it is Sinus Iridum. The closer photo is below:

The big crater is Copernicus and the little mountain area above it a bit to the left is Montes Carpalus. A third of the way from the bottom of the picture to Copernicus is the landing sites of Apollo 12 (Nov 19, 1969) and Apollo 14 (Feb 5, 1971).

Zoomed in even further on Copernicus, starting to have some issues with focus:

The crater is about 93km across, and about 3.8 km deep (from the top of the rim). The little mountains in the centre are 800m tall, the result of rock “rebounding” upwards after the impact crater was formed by a meteor hitting it.

I then decided to go to the bottom of the moon, and see what I could get of the rocky / bumpy portion. About one-third of the way from the left side, and one-third from the bottom, just below the darker area, there is a prominent crater with a dot in the centre. The crater itself is my favourite, Tycho, and I have no real idea why. Maybe I just like the name of it, but mostly I think it is because it is one of the first ones I ever imaged and subsequently learned its name. Tycho is near the size of Copernicus, 85 km across, but a smidge deeper (at 4 km, or 4.7 km if you go to the top of the ridge). The central mountain is 2 km tall.

The two craters are quite different in age though — Copernicus is about 800 million years old, while Tycho is a young buck, only 100 million years ago. Or, as the joke goes, 800 million and 100 million, plus two days, as I took the photo two days ago.

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AstroBlog 2019, outing #15 – Amazing skies for stargazing at the cottage

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Having finished the Carp star party on August 2nd, we headed up to the inlaws cottage for the weekend. It’s kind of a small family compound, and there are usually three or four sets of “aunts and uncles” (i.e., Generation 2), a handful of cousins and spouses (i.e., Generation 3), and sundry grandkids (i.e., Generation 4). It can get busy and 30+ is not an uncommon total number of people. This weekend was a smaller bunch, we only had 28.

After we arrived on the Saturday, I was frequently asked, “Did you bring your scope?” I hadn’t this time — we just brought Jacob’s smaller scope. The Celestron NexStar 4SE is WAY more portable than my big 8SE, and it has the advantage of having crisp clear images given that it’s a Maksutov-Cassegrain design. We considered setting up on Saturday night, but there was a huge cloud moving in from the north, as there has been on several previous visits. Often the South West area of the sky looks “okay”, but North West is frequently terrible. We didn’t bother setting up.

Sunday was clear all day. The sky had a few wisps of cloud here and there, which is little indication of the night, but in this case, it held. When the night started to fall around 8:30, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. There was some soup at the horizon, but other than that, nada.

The moon was clearly visible, and Jacob set up manually on the moon. We had a bunch of people come over of the 26 other people there, with most popping in for at least a quick look. Normally when I’m up there, there isn’t much to see on the moon. This time, we had a thin crescent, a clear terminator line, and before it got too dark, visible earthshine on the dark side of the terminator line. I guided them to find Mare Crisium and a couple of craters that I imaged back in June, and they were blown away by the level of detail on the moon.

Where we were set up is a deck next to a dock area, and it is boards above a shoreline. As such, it is a bit springy to walk on, and we had to enforce a “one scope, one viewer” rule that people had to wait on the grass until it was their turn. There were a couple of times we had five or six people waiting to view the next object. 

It took a while to get through all the kids and the adults for the moon. Then we turned our attention to Jupiter. Again, we ran through all the kids first as many were heading off to bed, and then through the adults. Lots of questions, and lots of attempts to see the bands. I boosted the power, and added a filter at various times, all trying to bring out detail as easily as possible for them to view. With the 9mm plossl, J’s scope has about 180x magnification, so the planet was discernible for just about everyone. From time to time, it was hard to resolve the bands, but some of that was getting people used to using the focusing knobs themself. Jacob hung in like a trooper, helping people figure out what to do. However, I realized that with the scope aligned, and most of it sitting relatively still for Jupiter, he had very little to do. He said he wasn’t bored, but it wasn’t that exciting either.

We did take a bit of a time-out in between the moon and Jupiter to perform a full alignment plus Jacob tried out all the various eyepieces. I was a bit surprised by the results. While everyone and their eyes are slightly different, I love my Delos eyepieces with the wide FoV. Jacob by contrast was more enamoured of the plossls. They work well for him, and as I was about to order a new 6mm one for him, it was good to know which style to get. It doesn’t hurt either that the style tends to be a bit cheaper, and gives a nice division of eyepieces between us for packaging and bundling.

After everyone had seen Jupiter, and most had drifted away, I started a quick sky tour. Just for fun, since the night skies were so clear, I tried for M110. This one is almost always at the start of my star tour on the 8SE, and to be honest, I have never seen anything. Maybe a faint fuzzy at most. In J’s scope? In between some trees? It was a very large and bright fuzzy. It’s an elliptical galaxy, and while we didn’t see much detail, it was far more obvious than anything I had seen before in that area. Which made me want to try for Andromeda.

M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, is hugely popular. Everyone says “Make sure you show people Andromeda”, etc. But to be honest, I have never really seen Andromeda. A faint fuzzy at most. Mostly because I frequently observe on nights when there is a moon, and partly because I frequently view from light polluted skies, I almost never feel like it’s worth my time. I even confess there have been times doing a star tour where I just skip it entirely. This time, it was visible in a gap between some big trees, a nice open area of the sky over the cottage, so I went for it. And BAM! There it was, completely clear.

Nebulae. Galaxies. Open clusters. All were available for the viewing. Double stars too. Albireo didn’t disappoint. Five of us looked at it over the course of the night, and we all saw slightly different colour combinations. Globulars were a bit disappointing, but the rest was coming out great. It was hard to pick just the right “next” object as I worked through the star tour with Andrea and Jacob. In the end, we were trying to finish up just in time for Saturn to come out from behind a bunch of trees close to our viewing site. I thought Saturn would be in view about 45 minutes from when I first saw it (I walked out on a dock to see past the treeline). Instead, the movement across the sky took almost 2 hours (!) before Saturn appeared in our line of sight. Jacob got to see it just before 11:30 and bedtime, but Andrea had just given up at that point.

After J left, I went and got a bunch of the remaining adults (six or so) who were still up, and gave them a look at Saturn. While they were impressed, I think they had been more impressed by the Galilean moons and our own moon itself.

J’s 4SE scope worked great. If I had had my 8SE that night, and there were a couple of faint objects begging for the bigger scope, I probably would have stayed up almost all night. It was simply the best sky I had seen in 35 years, all the way back to when I was a young teenager out at the lake and the sky was full of stars.

Plus, just for a bonus during the night, every so often a meteor would streak across the sky. I saw about 4 for the night, J saw his first, and a couple of other people did too. After packing up around 12:30, I sat at the edge of the lake and just stared out at the sky. I would have loved to stay there all night, but I was exhausted and I reluctantly put myself to bed. I’m hoping to go back up in a few weeks, and I am dreaming that one of the nights will be even half as good.

A great night, great skies, and great company with whom we could share the stars. It doesn’t get much better than that.

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AstroBlog 2019, outing #14 – Re-doing the Carp Star Party

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We did the Carp star party on Saturday July 27th and I already blogged about it (AstroBlog 2019, outing #11 – Star party in Carp…). It was touch and go for the clouds earlier in the day, but we declared GO and hoped for the best. Unfortunately, the best was somewhat less than our hopes. Clouds covered good-sized swaths in the sky, and while we got to show Jupiter and Saturn quite extensively, not much else was on the agenda for the evening. While it was a fun night, and we had a good crowd, it was hard to say it was a “success”. However, a couple of members suggested giving it a go for the backup night too, and with the permission of our location hosts, we did the Star Party again on Friday August 2nd.

The night was good and the weather was solid. Since I had someone else ready to act as the closing “marshal” for the event, it meant I could leave early. And thus I could take Jacob to his first star party where he would have his OWN SCOPE set up. The plan was relatively simple…arrive early, set up both scopes, observe for about 90 minutes, and then book it home to put the cub to bed.

Soooo…

I was a bit later leaving to get there than I intended as I was a bit tired. But I got all the gear in the trunk and we made it about 10-15 minutes later than I originally hoped. That makes it a little tight for setting up, and because other people were already there, we couldn’t set up right at the front. I hadn’t put much thought into “where” we would set up, but Jacob’s scope is short. So we should have been right at the front if we could have been. We weren’t, and while I started off with our two scopes relatively side by side with just a little table between us, I had to move his farther back so that he wouldn’t be blocked by the lines and people observing through other scopes. Live and learn, right?

Setup for my scope was relatively fine, as it was for his, at least initially. Everything together, he did most of his, and was ready to go. Except the bugs were bad, and he went up to the car to get something. On the way back, he tripped going over a curb, and skinned both shins badly enough to bleed. I was still trying to set everything up before it got dark, so Andrea went and helped him. She brushed him off, blotted the wounds with Kleenex, and did the best to keep him calm and not freaking out. Right up until she sprayed bug spray on his open wounds. The reaction was rapid and intense. She tried cleaning it off with water from his water bottle, but it still stung like hell. I thought he would be completely done at that point. But he wasn’t. She got him calmed back down and he came over to work the scope.

By this point, it was dark enough to get started with observing, and the line-ups of public stargazers were already starting to form. I pointed my scope towards the moon and then handed over the controls to Andrea, much to her surprise and initial consternation. But she could keep it aligned and people could view, so I went and got Jacob going.

At first, his 4SE scope was NOT cooperating for alignment. For some reason, the new battery in his red dot finder wasn’t working, no idea why, and so he was only using the Rigel Finder. The last time we used it, I wasn’t that impressed, and this time I was initially VERY frustrated. We were aligning just fine with just it, but then when I checked in the scope, even with a huge field with a low-power eyepiece, the target wasn’t even IN the field of view. WTF? His scope is only set up for his height, and we forgot the step stool we use for viewing, so I had nothing to sit on. Meanwhile, I’m hunched over his low scope trying to figure out WHY it’s not working! Frak!

I decided to go back to absolute basics. I pick a light on the horizon, not a star, and try to line up on it. But while the Rigel Finder is set on it, the main scope isn’t even CLOSE to the horizon. It’s off by almost 5 degrees. WTF? I reached out to adjust the Rigel Finder and it came off in my hands. It wasn’t clipped in at the front, just one side. So it was angled upwards. Doh! I reattached it, made sure it fully snapped in, swung over to Jupiter, and BAM! There it was in the scope too. Whew!

Jacob had been waning between the slow start, frustrating options, and the pain in his legs. But once he was up and running, he found Jupiter, and then Saturn all on his own. The moon was too low in the sky for him to see past the people viewing through other scopes, but he had it working. I gave him a bunch of extra EPs, but he ended up using his main one for the night. I had hoped to test him on a bunch of different EPs to see which ones he liked, but we got sidetracked with viewers. I stood back more than once and watched him demonstrate his scope for strangers, and he showed them Saturn and Jupiter with great pride. Plus he loved them all congratulating him on how well he did working the scope.

Meanwhile, Andrea was being put through her paces. So I rescued her, not that she needed it, and let her go hang out with Jacob so he could show off for her. I mostly kept the scope on the moon until it was below the horizon, and kept it controlled manually, but people seemed to really enjoy it. I used my standard eyepiece-of-choice, the 17.3mm Delos with the wide FoV, and it is very forgiving for newbies and the public in general.

Shutting down was hard, I felt like I had to turn people away, but Jacob had to get home. Definitely a successful evening, we just know that we have to get there earlier next time so he can be at the front of the rows with no one blocking his lower height. I was also surprised — there were at least two other young scope operators there that night, something that doesn’t normally happen.

But I think I most enjoyed seeing Jacob beaming after showing some random strangers the mysteries of Saturn and Jupiter. Sometimes, it’s a bit of a drug. Good to get him hooked early.

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AstroBlog 2019, outing #13 – Backyard imaging of Jupiter, Saturn and stars

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I already blogged about the new Phone Skope adapter that I was able to review as a demo unit. On August 1st, I took it back out to see what I could get for Jupiter and Saturn. Between July 31st and August 1st outings (i.e., during the day on the 1st), I revisited online what various people were doing with different scopes and smartphones to get seemingly much more impressive results than I was. I knew, for example, that Andrew Symes used video, and I had experimented a bit with video, but without much luck.

But when I reviewed a whole bunch of posts online on Facebook, google images, and Cloudy Nights, I had a small eureka moment. Not only were all of them using video, they were all using WAY more power than I was. While I was going up to a 15mm plossl on my scope, which gives me about 135x magnification, I was reluctant to go much higher at risk of introducing too much turbulence and noise in the images. Yet when I reviewed Andrew Symes’ approach with video, I realized he was using a 7mm eyepiece — IN THE SAME SCOPE AS ME! In other words, more than twice the power I was using. 290x magnification in fact. Wow, I almost NEVER go that high, not even in visual. Hmm…what were other people doing? Well, I broke out the online magnification calculator and started plugging in various people’s scopes and eyepiece combinations, and almost all of them were using above 250x. Video or stand-alone single frames, everyone was going way more power than me.

I had hoped that keeping the power low would give me more control over quality, but the difference in power also explained a problem I had when stacking images in the video. While I could get PIPP to process the videos and get them ready for AutoStakkert, when I went to do alignment points in AST, it didn’t want to do it automatically. It felt that I didn’t have enough APs in the image. Well, of course not, doh! The picture wasn’t big enough. So I headed out for a new attempt with way more power. My largest EP is a 9mm plossl, which is only 226x magnification, but it was all I had to work with for now.

For all of the following planetary images, I’m using a Celestron NexStar 8SE, iPhone XS Max, Night Cap software, 9mm Celestron Omni plossl, and a Phone Skope smartphone adapter. I tried a bit of a mix of video and single frames, some with digital zoom, some without.

First up is a video of Jupiter of 1m49s in length. I ran it through PIPP with planetary settings, centred the object, cropped to 250×250. I then loaded AutoStakkert, assigned 52 alignment points, kept best 25% of the photos. And flipping plus rotation to normal view.

A second video was 1m12s, same settings for PIPP and Autostakkert although I could only manage 44 alignment points. Not great, but still better than anything I was getting earlier.

A third video was 1m16s, with 35 alignment points. Ooh, progress.

A fourth video, 1m16s also, but just a single frame. Not as good as the stacked, but the best single frame I’d had to that point, even if post processing was still needed.

I played with it slightly, not sure it made any difference:

I tried reprocessing the video, lowering the size of the alignment points, and managed a whopping 101 APs this time.

A 1m07s video gave me 35 APs and this, which I’m QUITE happy with…definitely making progress:

Soooo, it was time to up the difficulty and go for Saturn. A single frame gave me the photo below, based on f/1.8, ISO 50, and 1/2 second duration, although I think I had some digital zooming going on in that one too. Still the best I’ve had to this point.

Then I threw on a filter, played with ISO to 64 and duration down to 1/10s, and maxed my digital zoom. I don’t know what I was thinking.

I was running out of steam for the night, and did one more frame for Saturn — nixed the digital zoom, ISO up to 320, and duration down to 1/60s. Hmm, not bad.

I definitely feel like I’m on the right track. So I got greedy. Since planets are going so well, and the moon is easy, why not try for stars? Hah!

I tried for Arcturus, ISO 10000 and 5s duration (the settings that Loren Ball suggests online), and got this:

Yep, it’s a star. Not much else in the shot though! 🙂 I attempted a cluster twice with ISO down to 8000 and still 5s duration:

Not much detail in there, alas. But at least I’m seeing SOMETHING. And then to finish things off, I went for another star. I have no memory now of what it was or which one. I thought I went for Mizar, but I don’t see anything suggesting a double star in that image below. Again, ISO of 8K and 5s duration, single frame.

I feel like there are lessons to be learned in those last few images, but there’s just one small problem. I don’t remember which eyepiece I was using. I *think* went back to 25mm but I’m not positive. Kind of hard to replicate if you lose the note saying what size you’re using next. Still, I’m making progress.

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AstroBlog 2019, outing #12 – Backyard imaging with the new smartphone adapter

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On July 31st, I did a full test of the Phone Skope adapter while imaging in my backyard (full review available at Review – Astrophotography using a Phone Skope adapter). The various pieces fit together nicely and it has much nicer weight than the Celestron NexYZ behemoth. However, while it was a great test of the adapter, I wouldn’t say I made great success on my imaging technique.

I got a couple of shots of Jupiter:

I relied heavily on digital zoom, and found one of the moons photobombing:

And Jupiter is great, but everyone wants to see Saturn, right?

I even managed a shot of Albireo, not that you can really tell that is what it is.

Good test of the demo adapter I borrowed from Phone Skope, and a couple of interesting images in there. But the digital zoom is too noisy and I still need to improve my focus.

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Review – Astrophotography using a Phone Skope adapter

The Writing Life of a Tadpole Posted on by  

Today I’ll be reviewing the Phone Skope smartphone adapter for astrophotography using an iPhone XS Max and a Celestron NexStar 8SE telescope. But before we get to the review, I’ll give you a bit of history and colour commentary for my limited background in astrophotography to help inform your understanding of my review.

Getting started with astronomy and dipping my toe in astrophotography waters

I bought my 8SE scope just over five years ago, and my primary interest is and always will be visual observing. I have a small interest in astrophotography, and early on I played with a NexImage 5 webcam just to see if it was something I would cotton to quickly and fall in love. I didn’t. One of the reasons I had chosen the 8SE in the first place with its alt-az mount and goto capabilities was that I hate setup time, I don’t have the patience for an equatorial mount (at least not in my current configuration where I need portability for viewing), and adding in cables, a laptop, etc., to use the Nex5MP was going in the wrong direction. I still have the equipment, but haven’t touched it in several years.

I did pick up the T-ring adapter to try attaching my Canon T5i REbel to the scope, got a few pics, but the mount isn’t really designed for it, and the learning curve is steep. Plus it works best with the laptop and cables attached. Plus a table, chair, shroud for light, dark skies, etc. etc. etc. I tried going the opposite way with an adapter that lets you attach point-and-shoot cameras to the scope, but I found it finicky with the settings and the telescoping lens (if you want to panic, watch the camera start up and start zooming out to find initial focus with the lens getting VERY close to your eyepiece that is mounted just in front of it!). I downloaded Magic Lantern, tried some settings, it all seemed promising, but it wasn’t a “must have” attachment and activity. I still have lots to learn for observing, so I moved away from it.

Enter the smartphone adapters

I had heard vaguely a few years ago that there was some sort of adapter you could buy that would let you attach your smartphone above your eyepiece, similar to the design for the point-and-shoot camera adapters. Then while attending the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC) General Assembly here in Ottawa in 2017, the local telescope store had a small table set up with some accessories. And BAM! There was a Meade adapter for the smartphone available for about $30 Cdn and it was an impulse buy. Why not give it a try? After all, I like gadgets.

There are many adapters on the market right now, ranging from $10 no-name models up to $100+ versions. And they all have the same three elements in common:

  1. A universal “hold/grip” for the smartphone (aka the platform);
  2. A tool to “hold/grip” an eyepiece (aka the clamp); and,
  3. Sliding mechanisms to move the smartphone’s camera over the eyepiece (aka alignment tools).

Once all the pieces are assembled, you put your eyepiece in the telescope normally, except it now has a smartphone and adapter attached above it.

The Meade adapter worked “okay” for me, not great, although some of that performance was poor technique by me and the limitations of my then-current phone. The platform was straightforward enough, open it up left and right, insert phone, close sides to “pinch” it. Easy peasy. The clamp was a round circle with three mounting screws spread evenly around it; you inserted the eyepiece and tightened the three screws by hand to hold it in place. Pretty much the same as you do with a telescope mount for your EP, except three screws instead of one. One limitation however is that the clamp was only big enough to hold 1.25″ plossls. Then came the “technique” problem with the centring part. Every smartphone puts the camera in a slightly different place, and so the alignment tools have to let you adjust the location of the platform over the clamp/eyepiece so the camera is aligned with the centre of the EP. Sounds easy, and you can use your smartphone camera in view mode to see when it is centred. The challenge is that on the Meade adapter there were two little sliders – one horizontal and one vertical – that would let you move the camera left and right or forward and back (not height, that is controlled by how deep you place the EP in the clamp). When you got it “right”, you tightened a setting screw that would tighten the two directional sliders together like a “T”. All while holding them in the exact centred position below your smartphone and not letting them adjust even a little.

Before you ever take a picture, that combination of elements (platform, clamp, and adjustment tools) can be a bit finicky to accomplish well each time. It takes practice and improvements in your technique over time. Changing smartphones requires completely new adjustments; changing eyepieces in the Meade adapter was relatively fine as the plossls are almost all the same size (they have to be in order to fit!). But the finicky side of alignment was giving me less than stellar outcomes.

It was almost enough to make me want to give up. But by this time I had found Andrew Symes online (@FailedProtostar on Twitter and Canadian Astronomy on WordPress). I have never met him, but Andrew also lives in Ottawa as I do, albeit in a slightly darker suburb than me. And he has the EXACT same scope with stock alt-az mount with which he was producing AMAZING results with a simple adapter and an iPhone. I wondered if it was my alignment challenge that was the limiting factor (it wasn’t, but I didn’t know that at the time).

Upgrading my adapter

The Northeast Astronomy Forum held in 2018 was abuzz with news that Celestron had a brand new adapter called the NexYZ that looked like the Cadillac of adapters. Still designed as an universal adapter for any smartphone, it had made what seemed like significant improvements on all three elements:

  1. The platform was larger and would take all the big smartphones;
  2. The clamp was now a pincer that could enlarge to even take 2″ eyepieces as well as larger body 1.25″ eyepieces; and,
  3. The alignment tools were replaced by three knobs that would allow separate and granular adjustment left and right with one knob, forward and back with another, and up and down with a third.

It looked like a game changer to me, and despite the $80 Cdn pricetag, I had to have it. I wasn’t looking to create Astronomy Photo of the Day (APOD) outcomes, more just souvenirs of my own viewing. Essentially simple photos for my Astronomy Log to avoid doing sketches (I hate sketching). And since I thought my problem was alignment, the modifications all sounded like huge improvements.

The adapter arrived in early June, and I hoped for immediate success. It didn’t happen. My technique and physical setup had improved, but unfortunately, I was also bumping up against a technological limit I hadn’t realized. I was using a Samsung Note 3 phone, and when I tried to image anything other than the moon, the sensor didn’t seem to want to pull ANY photons in. If I tried a starfield, the camera wouldn’t even snap the photo. It would just stop and say there was nothing to image in the field of view. Sigh.

As I searched around online for others having success, I discovered the truth — my camera API was old, and wouldn’t do more than the basics. But I also noticed something else. Almost everyone who was producing really good results (like Andrew) was using an iOS device (different models) and the software Night Cap. It’s only available as an iOS app, but it works really well. I started wondering if I would upgrade my phone next time to an Apple device. My wife wanted to upgrade at New Year’s and I thought, “Why not?”. So my son inherited my Samsung as a wifi device, and I got the new XS Max.

Night Cap installed? Check. Phone mounted in adapter? Check. Adjustments made over the eyepieces? Check. Bam! Moon photos, no problem. Adjusted settings, tried to replicate the results of a guy online named Loren Ball who produces images of asteroids with pinpoint starfields. My results were not great, as I still struggled a bit with the alignment over the EP.

Depending on the eyepiece, I was finding it finicky to get the right setup left/right, up/down, and forward/back. Close, but sometimes the EP would also be angled instead of 90 degrees to the phone. Not bad, all within the realm of beginner success, but I tried for some planets and failed spectacularly. Except I knew Andrew Symes had used the SAME setup with a cheaper adapter and had GREAT shots. I wasn’t trying to get his quality, but I was disappointed with some of my results. I doubled-down on testing different components and trying to improve my technique, and read voraciously online to see how other people were getting their results.

Have you heard of the Phone Skope adapter?

I was reading one of the few threads on the Cloudy Nights website dealing with smartphone astrophotography and found a post by a new member that mentioned a new type of adapter called the Phone Skope. I’d never heard of it, but I followed the link anyway just to see what was “different”. I confess I didn’t find the initial website photos and videos particularly convincing — there were almost no pics with it attached to an astronomy telescope, just spotting scopes, binoculars and hunting sights on rifles. The gallery had some impressive nature shots, but they could have been taken with a DSLR for all I knew. I couldn’t get the videos to play (in Firefox, the centre button on the video screen wouldn’t play the videos, you have to click in the bottom left-hand corner to start the players!), and even the “buy” site didn’t give me any more info. I was about to ignore it, when I noticed that one of the videos was from Youtube, so I clicked over to search for it there, found it, and pressed play.

And my smartphone astrophotography world changed.

The Phone Skope takes a completely different approach to the adapter approach than almost all of the other adapters out there for all three elements:

  1. The platform to hold your phone is not an universal mount for all smartphones with pincers to hold your phone, it is a customized mold for YOUR phone. It is sold separately from the eyepiece parts so you can change or upgrade your phone and just replace your phone case. While this also increases your cost (you’re buying a phone case in effect), the benefit is almost hidden. The custom case? It knows EXACTLY where your phone lens is. And the parts join up so that the other parts are PERFECTLY above where YOUR lens is going to be in the case. Game changer!
  2. The clamp is what sold me. Instead of a pincer (like the Celestron NexYZ) or a round setting circle with three individual screws to manually adjust (like the Meade), the Phone Skope clamp uses proven technology to ensure your round eyepiece is centred perfectly every time — it uses the same rotating three-point chuck that drills use to hold drill bits. Drills have to have their bits perfectly centred with no margin for vibration, and so they use a three-point chuck where all three pieces come in at the same time when you turn the drill chuck key. The Skope clamp works almost the same way, although the “key” is a small plastic handle that sits overtop the clamp and allows you to rotate it clockwise.
  3. The adjustment tools? Completely unneeded. With the phone set in the case + the hole for the camera lens exactly mounted over the clamp + the clamp holding the eyepiece exactly centred, you are guaranteed 100% alignment over the EP every time.

I was in awe. It looked like the perfect adapter. Everything I hated with the other two were “resolved”. The only caveat was that you wouldn’t be able to just take your phone out and let someone else use the adapter with their phone — it is limited to YOUR phone size and shape.

But I don’t share my adapters when I’m imaging, it’s just me. I wanted to buy one immediately. Except I just dumped a whack of cash to replace a bunch of stolen EPs, as well as buying my son a scope. Sigh. And I already own TWO adapters, the Meade and the NexYZ. Double sigh. Oh well, it was a nice fantasy.

But I really wanted to try one

I got to thinking. The smartphone case was $60US; the eyepiece holder was $40US. A little out of my league for a “test” purchase. How could I try one out? How about the same way I try books that I’m not sure if I want to purchase? I’ve been reviewing books for years, and people have sent me copies in exchange for an honest review. Would the company let me borrow one?

Well, I *am* an experienced reviewer and a decent-enough writer that people read my stuff. I have a couple of posts on my site about NexStar alignment issues, and I get a LOT OF hits from astronomy people to those pages each day. Plus I’m active on Facebook forums and Cloudy Nights in the area of smartphone astrophotography while still a newbie, and I have some astro credentials (star party coordinator for the local club plus sit on a board for an astropark). Would that be enough to borrow an adapter?

Apparently it was. I emailed the company, explained my desire to try it even though I already had two other phone adapters, and asked if I could borrow one for an XS Max in exchange for an honest review. They said yes, and I did a little jump for joy. I *really* wanted to try it. Except they’re in Utah and I’m in Ontario, and that meant I had to wait for delivery. Astronomers are NOT good at waiting for astro deliveries, I think it is genetic.

It arrived last week and I immediately had clouds roll in that night. That’s also endemic to the hobby…all astronomy goods are cloud magnets when packed in shipping boxes. But the next night was clear enough to attempt a first light trial.

Getting started – wait, there’s software?

Everyone sells adapters, none of them come with software. I mean, why not use the software on your phone already? Except Phone Skope has a matching iOS and Android app. While it has some basic features, the main reason to use their software is that it allows you to manually switch between camera lenses on your phone if you have more than one (something not all apps do easily). On my XS Max, the cameras are physically located one above the other in the top left hand corner on the back, and the Phone Skope clamp can be slid down or up if desired (for regular or zoom lens). I left it in the up position, so I didn’t need that feature, but the rest of the software was surprisingly decent. The opening setup asks you what you’re pairing it with:

I set it for my phone, and tested the unencumbered phone with it:

The main screen has options for flash, which lens I wanted to use, back or front lens, previous photos, brightness, switching to video, taking the photo, and more detailed settings. There are also sliders to adjust focus, zoom, and brightness. The switching option for video also lets you choose SLO-MO, Time Lapse, 4K Video, and Video Quality, while the general settings had options for Stabilization, Filters, Timer, Watermark, GeoTagging, SAVE AS (format), Photo Quality, and a Features List. I was impressed with the level of detail, but I confess I have little use for the app — I’ll be using Night Cap as it is hands-down the best app on iOS for astrophotography.

Checking out the parts

The guys at Phone Skope sent me the case for my phone (the platform), two different eyepiece holders (the clamp), and a bridge (kind of an adjustment tool of sorts), plus a chuck key, cleaning cloth, and a USB remote (not shown). Here is the set below:

For the case (i.e. the platform), there are five holes — four for slots for the bridge, and one for the camera holes which are perfectly aligned over the camera location on my phone since it is the customized case for the XS Max. Note that you have to remove any phone case you already have in order to use it, and it is designed ONLY for astronomy use (i.e. they don’t recommend leaving it on your phone all the time). For those who have OTTER DEFENDER cases, you can get a custom one that will go over your Otter case. I have Otter, but not the Defender model, so I went with a standard XS Max design.

The back comes with a Phone Skope logo too.

To marry the case to the eyepiece chuck, there is a bridge / joiner. It has four little nubs that fit in the slots and can either be in the top position (centreing over the upper camera) or the down position (centreing over the lower camera). It also has a groove for the chuck to be “turned” / “screwed” into it for stability. Front and back shown below:

The two eyepiece chucks (i.e. the “clamps”) are slightly different sizes to correspond to different sizes of eyepieces, and you can see the three prongs that come out to tighten evenly on the eyepiece and ensure it is centred in the chuck.

The top has two elements — one for the “chuck key” (i.e. a turning handle to slip on) and one for turning “into” the bridge to hold the chuck to the platform.

The plastic handle that turns the above gears is below. I don’t know what to call it — it basically acts like the equivalent of a chuck key, or just a larger “gripper” so you don’t have to turn the chuck by hand.

When you take the bridge and attach it to the case (aka to the platform), you get the following receptacle ready for the chuck and eyepiece to be turned in:

When all is combined (platform, joiner, chuck, and eyepiece), it looks like below. Notice the weight differential — there is almost no weight to the adapter for holding the phone because it is a simple plastic mold to fit the phone. By contrast, the Celestron NexYZ and the Meade adapter both have significant additional metal and plastic that adds weight to the scope when imaging.

Starting the first full test

I connected the first full eyepiece for the test, and decided to start with my lowest power lens, a Celestron 40mm Omni plossl. I found it simplest to turn the chuck upside down and set the eyepiece down in it vertically before starting to turn (I got it close to start, and then inverted it).

I then married it to the phone case, leaving the phone out of the case for now.

Here is a shot with the chuck and eyepiece mounted on the back and the view through the case’s hole for the camera lens. Perfectly centred, you wouldn’t even know there was anything back there!

With the actual phone in the case, and everything “together”, this was the initial view with the phone.

With the Phone Skope software, it looked like this, just over my tabletop:

But nobody came to see shots of my table, they want shots of exciting things like Jupiter and its moons.

Note that the problem for focus and the circle is not the adapter’s fault. No matter the lighter weight of the case and attachments, I’m still attaching a honking big phone plus an eyepiece. And on my mount, that can cause a bit of tilt/slippage in the image. There are some techniques to fix that, but I didn’t worry about that on first light. With ISO adjusted, and digital zoom, I could tell better it was Jupiter.

Zoomed out, well, still Jupiter but my eye power was a bit low.

So I stepped up the power to a Hyperion 36mm lens.

Notice the gap at the top, i.e. there’s an obvious “hole”…the top of the Hyperion has a bit of a lip on it and the chuck prongs have to either go below it or above it. So it limits how close I can put the lens to the top of the chuck.

Nevertheless, with a bit of digital zoom, you can see Jupiter up close and personal. Until it goes off-screen and I have to zoom back out, recentre, etc. I probably should have aligned the scope. 🙂 The shake is mainly as I was also doing it from my deck that jumps and jiggles if anyone breathes. Like me. Or the neighbour four blocks over.

I also really need to work on focus.

But Jupiter is there.

I don’t have the camera settings perfect, but it’s there.

Really tiny without digital zoom though.

So let’s add more power — up to the Televue Panoptic 27mm.

Again, there’s a gap below the edge, but manageable.

With an itty bitty Jupiter.

More power is just a nudge to a 25mm plossl which fits in the chuck perfectly. All the plossls do.

But I got a bit too much gap between the camera lens and the eyepiece, and so I saw this on the screen when trying to focus, etc.

I settled it down, and managed a bit more detail, albeit still with the zoom.

My next power boost is to the 17.3mm Televue Delos. This is my favorite eyepiece for visual, generally, with a huge Field of View and a 117x magnification factor on my scope.

The Delos is a beautiful eyepiece, but notice the slightly tapered body leading up to the lens? That tapering is not a good combination with a three-prong chuck that likes to grab near the top of the EP. I made it work, but it wasn’t the best combo.

Still, I got a bright image.

Again, another small bump in power to 15mm, with another plossl. They sit in the chucks REALLY well, with lots of shaft left over to go in the eyepiece holder on the scope.

I didn’t do awesome on the settings but that is technique, not the adapter.

So I boosted again to the 14mm Televue Delos, also with tapering near the top. However, the Delos style DOES have adjustable eye relief, and it will take a bit of practice to get the right combo for it.

One of the moons was trying to photobomb Jupiter, but again, more work needed on stabilizing the mount (not the adapter) and improving my focus and settings.

And finally it was time for the big gun. Or more like the little gun with all the power. A 9mm plossl.

The setup on the phone showed this as my viewer:

With digital zoom, I could easily find Jupiter.

And Jupiter is great, but everyone wants to see Saturn, right?

And while I’m playing and finishing off, I thought I might as well try for a double star, namely Albireo.

Of course, if I didn’t know and tell you it was Albireo, we wouldn’t know, but it is, trust me. Still need to improve technique. In the meantime, let’s go back to Saturn.

FYI, as an aside, the Phone Skope people also included a USB shutter remote with the package, and it is USB powered as well. I charged it up before hand, and it worked flawlessly for me. A nice change from a couple of other remotes I have had that die regularly or just kill the battery. Rechargable is sweet.

Conclusion

The Phone Skope adapter takes a completely different approach to attaching smartphones to telescopes with a custom phone case, eyepiece holder, and a bridge to marry the two. Together, the three pieces completely eliminate the guesswork from ensuring the camera lens is exactly centred over your eyepiece. The phone case and attachments are much lighter than conventional adapters, reducing the overall load on your scope, with less impact on stability and alignment. I had some success with every eyepiece combo I tried with it, but more practice may be needed to improve the fit and height setups to fine-tune it a bit more with larger eyepieces. Even the free phone app works well, as does the remote shutter.

On the downside, the custom phone cases mean that the adapter is no longer “universal” for anyone else looking through your scope, but that is an intentional trade-off between universality and guaranteed alignment. I would have liked a small option on one of the chucks to move the prongs up or down to better grasp certain eyepieces (like the Delos) that were tapered, but it wasn’t a significant challenge. I think the only real challenge for most people will be the price. While the reusable chucks/eyepiece holders are on par with medium-range adapters (~$40), the extra separate cost of a customized phone case (~$60) will likely put it above the range of most casual photographers. While I used the larger diameter chuck for a couple of the larger eyepieces to try them, they all worked in the smaller chuck, so you wouldn’t need to buy both unless you were using mostly 2″ eyepieces.

For me, I’ll be sad to return the demo unit when my test is done (I still want to test it with different objects such as the moon and star fields, mostly to see if there are any hidden issues, as well as try improving my technique with the larger EPs). I found the Phone Skope to be a gamechanger for ensuring fast, accurate alignment of the camera lens over the eyepiece, leaving me to focus on finding objects to image and working the camera in my smartphone, rather than fighting the adapter. Even though I already own two other adapters, I might just have to save my nickels and dimes to buy one of these.

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AstroBlog 2019, outing #11 – Star party in Carp…

The Writing Life of a Tadpole Posted on by  

The night of Saturday July 27th was our attempt at our monthly star party in Carp, suitable for public star gazing. The forecast at mid-day was pretty iffy, but I crowd-sourced some other views, and we said “GO!” hoping for the best. What we got was considerably below “best”.

At 9:00 p.m., we were about 70% clouded out to the North and West. To the South, we had some windows between a few clouds, enough for Saturn to put in an appearance. Oddly, it showed up before Jupiter just because Jupiter was playing hide-and-seek still. A new member needed help setting up a Dobsonian, and I got him going just in time for Saturn to appear and for him to try it. He nailed it first try and by all accounts, seemed pretty happy overall for the night.

I was surprised — sure, we called a “GO” for the night, but generally, most people who are coming look up and change their minds if the weather is lousy. Not last night — we had almost 150 people for the night! I was really surprised. A lot of newcomers, some who had never looked through a scope before, and even if they had, many had never seen Saturn before. So from their perspective, the night was a hit. For the experienced astronomer, not so much.

Saturn and Jupiter went in and out for the night. A friend hosting an event about 30 minutes north of us across the river in Quebec was completely socked in, and had to close up shop. A couple of times we had NOTHING going on, just waiting for things to come back out. You know the weather is bad when you set up on Arcturus and people are impressed to see that.

For me, though, the highlight of the night was meeting a young woman named Izabella. About 16, I think, and interested in the stars. She had dragged her mother out, and had never looked through a scope before. She was very interested in the stars, even if I couldn’t show her Vega (it was practically at zenith, which is a poor position on my SCT to hit without becoming a contortionist or having perfect alignment). Even as we got close, it suddenly clouded in and I could see nothing. Sigh. However, we hung out for over an hour, and I let her try working the scope to find Arcturus and Mizar, which she did well.

Earlier in the night, when I was setting out to go, I did a dance with my son as to whether he wanted to come. He could only stay for about 90 minutes if he went, and there was no guarantee there would be breaks in the clouds enough to see. In the end, he would have seen SOME stuff, but not worth it to have gone, so I’m glad he stayed home. I want his first real star party to have LOTS of targets for him to see. We may try again on Friday. Fingers crossed.

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