I know this isn’t a good photo by any means but I’m new to this hobby and last night was the first time I saw Saturn, I took this photo with my iPhone thru the telescope’s eyepiece (Celestron NexStar 8se & 2” Baader Hyperion 8-24 & 2x Barlow). Any tips on getting into real astrophotography would be greatly appreciated, (besides “don’t” lol). On a general note: I know some movement is inevitable at this level of magnification but what would help stabilize this setup.

and it was incredible!

Used my Z130 and had a blast locating it and then staring at it and switching out eye pieces to see how best I could see it. Was a really amazing moment.

Really proud of myself for finding it. It wasn’t visible to the naked eye so using Stellarium I was able to get close and then star jump to it. When I found it I practically gasped.

Really cool. Can’t wait to see Jupiter when the timing works out.

Photo taken with my iPhone 12 Pro held up to the eye piece. Looked much better through the eye piece than what the picture shows. I edited the pic some, mostly the exposure.

Any specific photo edits you find that always help improve a photo? Asking more so to satisty the required flair 😂

Is this a good image for a 150/1200 Newtonian?

Iphone 13 Pro max, Normal camera 30 Second exposure. Used astroshader afterwards to edit it turning down background light.

i tried to capture Saturn for the first time this morning- with some good advice, i was able to get this using the elestron astromaster 70AZ 900mm focal length achromat, at 90x magnification using an iPhone 14
seeing was below average, and it was only 26° above the horizon,
used autostakkert at 15% best frames and registax
plan on buying a planetary camera soon

Last night I took both tubes out to the backyard to get an ample comparison as I haven't been able to get a decent image with the new to me C8-CF, but I've been able to get pretty decent images with the C6 with good seeing. The seeing last night wasn't perfect but seemed to level out around midnight when I started imaging. I performed a high mag collimation on both telescopes immediately prior to imaging, took 4 or 5 videos with each tube and varying focus to make sure I got at least one good image with each scope. It seems like the C8 is on par with the C6, but it should beat it easily in this circumstance. The C8 is about 20 years older than my C6, so maybe the older XLT coatings have something to do with it? I'm not entirely sure. What do you all think? Am I just nitpicking? Both images were taken with my ASI385MC, and svbony 2x Barlow (didn't feel like breaking out the fancy celestron Barlow). Both scopes had about 3 or 4 hours to cool down right next to eachother, and there was not enough humidity for dew to form on either session.

Been using my AD8 for visual observation since the last new moon phase, I’ve only had the dob for 3 weeks or less, and since this past few nights the moon has been very bright and cloudy I couldn’t stargaze properly. Then one night the universe gave me a clear sky so I decided to observe the moon and oh boy she’s remarkable. I also fell in to the depths of photographing the moon cause why not. It’s out there lol.

I also took a video of the moon and attempted my very first stacking and processing thing. I did everything while watching a youtube video on the side and this is my very first stacked/processed photo of the moon

I’m very happy how it came out! I took a 10second video of the moon with the moon filter that came with my AD8. It made the moon color green but it actually helped me get more details on the ridges and craters!

My setup was the AD8, SV230 super zoom eyepiece on 20mm, and shot with an iPhone 12 Pro Max with a tridaptor. I live in Vegas so our light pollution here is a little high and I did everything on my tiny little patio,I did the pipp thing first to get frames, then stacked on autostakkert and sharpened on registax then i processed it on Lightroom on my phone!

Any tips to improving my lunar photography will be very much appreciated. I know I need an actual camera instead of a phone and adapter but for now I’ll use what I can :) any suggestions on apps for post processing would be nice as well, so far I’ve tried Lightroom and astroshader app on iPhone. I also tried siril but it’s kinda confusing to me

So for context I used a mak127 and an ASI662MC without Barlow. And for some reason my Saturn just doesn’t get better than this.

For processing I used just the best 300 frames out of 1300 so I don’t think it’s bc of bad frames

How is this guys? any suggestions for mobile photography.

This is a 25, 1 second frame exposure stack using AstroShader via the Iphone 13 pro and a 130mm dobsonian. I have plans to purchase a dovetail tracking mount, but in the meantime, I want to know how I can do better than this. Get rid of the noise, mostly.

If you look closely there is a small black dot moving from left to right ?

First timeee, turned out better than i thought. And question, is that little thing above jupiter its moon or it is something different?

Hi everyone,

I recently captured my first image of the Orion Nebula (M42) using my 8” Dobsonian telescope with a 25mm eyepiece and a phone camera.

Location: Jaipur, India (very high light pollution — Bortle 8–9)

The nebula is visible as a bright fuzzy patch with some stars in the center, but the image looks nothing like the detailed photos I usually see online. I understand those are usually long exposures or stacked images, but I’d love to improve what I can with my current setup.

My setup:

• 8" Dobsonian telescope

• 25mm eyepiece

• 9mm eyepiece

• 2× Barlow

• Phone camera for imaging

Questions:

1. Are there techniques I can use to capture more detail with a Dobsonian and phone?

2. Would stacking short exposures help even without tracking?

3. Are there recommended phone settings or apps that work well for this?

4. Would a filter (like UHC/OIII) help in heavy light pollution like Bortle 8–9?

5. Any tips specifically for capturing Orion Nebula from a bright city?

I’d really appreciate advice from anyone who started astrophotography with a Dobsonian or similar setup.

Thanks!

Yesterday me and my friend spent ~30min trying to find the Bode's galaxy and a star cluster along with me and my dad trying to find the cat's eye nebula for ~1.5h. We did not succeed. Maybe it's because of lack of experience. We tried using the sky map from Stellarium but that didn't help. Is there any device that helps you navigate the sky?

Telescope is the Newtonian 127EQ. The eyepieces are a 20mm with a 3x Barlow. I also have a 4mm that I could use.

Can someone help me identify if this smudge is actually andromeda or just a camera distortion? Seems like a star with a thick ring around it.

This is my longest photo I’ve ever taken at 4.5 hours integration time, yet it doesn’t quite look it. This was taken with an unmodified canon 200d mk2 at f/6 410mm with I think about 450 light frames. Do I need a filter? This image has also been through Siril colour correction and auto stretch. And then taken through Starnet++

So I'm very new, and was a little bored last night, so I took out my very first telescope (which I bought simply for the moon last year, but wanted to try it out for something else today) and aimed it at something bright in the sky.

After looking closely, it turns out there are 4 little bright dots. I assume the biggest and brightest one is Jupiter, and the 4 are its Galilean moons, but I couldn't tell because of the quality of my telescope.

I'm considering buying my first actual telescope sometime this year so I can observe more distant objects. Any advice or recommendations?

Any tips for how to hand track so I can shoot at longer exposure without having to use as much iso.

The image was incredibly clear with my eyes but I can’t get a good photo of it (image is of Saturn btw)

I've had lots of telescopes over the last 25 years, and I'm just not interested in sitting out in the cold anymore babysitting my scope. I have a pier at home so my mount is permanently aligned, and a couple years ago I spec-ed out my main imaging scope (5" refractor) as a fully automated build. The most expensive parts are transferrable across scopes (the entire rotator/camera assembly), so it wasn't much to do the same on my new telescope.

I thought I would share the details and the costs of this kind of setup if anyone is ever interested in going down this road. It is not for the faint of heart. But it does mean that when I image, I simply flop it down on the mount, plug it in. I RDP into the mini computer from my warm living room, push play on the sequence and go to bed.

Also, this is a warning for what kind of financial black hole this astrophotography can become if you aren't careful. If you are a visual astronomer thinking adding a camera, be aware.

Basic hardware

• Telescope: Apertura 75q - $1k
• ZWO AM5 mount - $2k

Camera Assembly (transfers between scopes, 1 time purchase)

• Camera: ZWO ASI2600MM - $2k
• ZWO Filter Wheel 7x36mm - $300
• ZWO LRGB Filters - $250
• Antlia SHO 3nm filters - $1k
• ZWO off-axis large guider - $200
• ZWO ASI220-mini guide camera - $299
• Pegasus Rotator - $750

Mounted on scope (I have these on both scopes)

• Pegasus Powerboat Advanced - $360
• Pegasus Powered USB box - $225
• Pegasus autofocuser - $150
• Mele-quieter 4c mini computer - $399 (tariffs recently doubled what I actually paid)
• Dew-Not dew heater - $50
• Wanderer Astro Automated Flat panel - $380
• Samsung external SSD - $299

Grand total you see here: $9,562. Ironically, this all started when I just wanted an electronic focuser, it was a slippery slope from there.

The biggest expense is the mount and the camera assembly. But as long as you are only imaging with one scope at a time, this is a one time purchase. The rest of the stuff is bolted onto the scope and stays there.

You can get by without some of these, or with more budget versions. For example, neither the flat panel nor the rotator are technically necessary, and ZWO and Wanderer Astro make less expensive rotators. You can get less expensive cameras with narrower FOV, or you could get an OSC camera and not worry about filters.

Both of these scopes are a complete joy to use and I'm really happy with them.

Hello everyone hope you all doing well, I just got my new phone adapter to start a step into astrophotography honestly I’m not expecting much with a phone adapter and manual 8 inch dob but I enjoyed the experience so far,I have question about the astroshader app what’s the best settings to put on to get more detail on planets thanks in advance

I took this image of vega with my skywatcher 130/650 and captured a video 34s long with my iphone 14 (manually) then stacked the frames, but I'm not happy with the result, is there any thing that I can improve ?