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Old 28-04-2016, 10:44 PM
AEAJR (Ed)
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Cool Smartphone Astrophotography.

I am sure this has been discussed before so I presume you will point me in the right direction. I have a retired HTC One smartphone that I want to use to play with astrophotography and video.


I have it mounted in a frame that has the camera looking through a 10 mm plossl eyepiece. I also have available a 6.4 mm plossl, 25 mm plossl, 2X and 3X barlows.


I will be using this on my Meade ETX 80mm 400 mm FL Goto scope for now. May try it later on my Orion XT8i Intelliscope Dob.

The ETX 80 also has a rear port that faces the objective lens. Would I be better off using that rather than the 90 degree angle?


I am not interested in alternative equipment at this time. I just want to see what I can do with this. Just playing around with what I have.


I took some basic shots of the moon as a first test. Found I had to lock the focus in order to get it in focus otherwise the camera and the telescope focus seemed to be fighting with each other. I attach two just for reference. The smaller one was taken using a 25 mm eyepiece, 16X, in the Meade ETX 80. The larger one was taken using the 10 mm, 40X, in the ETX 80. Snapshots.


If I shoot video I presume I can use stacking software on videos I may take with this smartphone camera. Any suggestions?


So, tell me what I should know, should read, etc. Tips and tricks welcome. Just having fun at this point. Nothing serious. I have this equipment laying around so I thought I might give this a try.
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Old 04-05-2016, 01:49 PM
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sil (Steve)
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Ed,
All I can offer is look if you can get Cortex Camera app for your phone. 2yr ago I was confined to a wheelchair from a stroke and had to try to find ways to enjoy my photography and astronomy in a limited way.

CortexCam essentially uses multiple video frames to create a cleaner/better single photo. Hand held I can read the security microprint clearly on a banknote. I havent gotten around to trying it on an eyepiece but you should be able to get good shots with it. I use it for 99% of my phone photography.

I havent really found anything else helpful for phone/tablet astrophotographers. There are tools to help plan shots of course, but not for taking/registration/integration of shots. I do like making panoramas with Hugin on PC and for me AutoStitch (i'm on iphone) is my app of choice for phone panoramas, it tracks the phone movement to assist in positioning shots. Maybe something like that could be used to build a moon mosaic via the eyepiece.

All I could ever find for stacking images were programs to combine exposures for effects. Nothing particularly useful I found, I would still have to move photos to PC to try to work with them.

Bit of a shame but I guess itd be a niche market for anyone to bother. I'm also stuck with an unupgradeable ios7 so I cant even upgrade my sky safari or try some of the more recent "pro" camera apps that all now require a minimum of ios8.

I don't know if you posted pics (am at work where they block most of the internet) but would be interested to see how you progress. Or if anyone else has any handy apps to help (wouldn't expect anything to replace PixInsight, but simple astrphotography shouldn't be beyond the capability of a smartphone for those patient enough ... just another tool to use when you dont have the proper gear handy).
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Old 06-05-2016, 02:54 AM
AEAJR (Ed)
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Thanks. I will look into the Cortex camera app.
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Old 07-10-2016, 10:00 PM
Dirt (Luke)
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Just to add to this, I am using Cortex Camera and also found a new app called Average Camera Pro for iOS.

Cortex is faster at processing and possibly taking shots, but AvgCamPro can max out at 128 shots, with ability to take at set intervals of your choice. So far, my experience shows that AvgCamPro can possibly produce better stacked photos, although I need to test Cortex Camera a bit more to be fair.
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