Plug for my team at Google. One of the cool things in the Pixel camera is an "astrophotography mode", which takes far more pictures than normal with longer exposures.
You can try it out on any recent Pixel device by holding the phone very still (probably need to mount it) when it's dark. You can get incredible images with no additional effort, just pointing it up at the sky.
Or get not so good but still pretty decent and cool photos by downloading a port of the gcam app on another android phone. Like i did to get pics of the moon, Mars, jupiter and venus today!
Interesting this field is changed significantly last 20 years.
One thing is light pollution need to buy a big telescope if you can't transport it to the dark place. You have to drive 100+ from a big city.
Second is advanced image processing with deep learning. There is no need for accurate sky tracker anymore, you just shot many images and software combines.
> Second is advanced image processing with deep learning. There is no need for accurate sky tracker anymore, you just shot many images and software combines.
This is extremely helpful for professional astronomers, but having started astrophotography back in the day with a 35mm Rollei that allowed for arbitrary exposure, the moon, and a very numb index finger, I feel that the one image you produce with care and accuracy trumps the collage on some emotional dimension for me.
The collage is obviously the better image, but the amateur's photograph somehow captures both stars and stargazer.
I don't have any problems in a suburban area of the Bay Area with a small refractor. I can see bright nebulas, etc. The only reason for the big scope in a dark area is if you're trying to look at deep sky objects.
You still need a sky tracker to get enough exposures and generally, you want the item centered because that's where the optics are best.
I live in the middle of the peninsula- I can see orange in every direction I look at night. I just think this only matters when looking at DSOs. And generally, cities are bad for astro because of all the heat turbulence.
Smartphones (at least those with single cameras) have the advantage that you can just hold them up to a telescope's eyepiece and take a picture, which is a bit harder with "real" cameras.
they make mounts now where this is exactly what you do which is nice when the device can do longer exposure than you can hold still. they are adjustable so you can use it for a plethora of different devices.
They're great for use at star parties. You can keep switching out eyepieces (a common thing) to get the view you want for whatever is being viewed. Then each person can get a pic on their device. It makes them much more engaged especially since the CMOS sensors can start to pick out colors that the human eye can't see.
Even better than a smartphone, mounting a DSLR at the prime focus on a telescope makes it really fun at star parties.
I went to a star party for some kids with my scope. There were a bunch of other guys there with scopes- all of them reflectors with hard-to-see-through eyepieces looking at faint blobs in the sky. The kids seemed bored. So I set up my refractor, installed my dslr (turning on Live View) and pointed it at Jupiter. You clearly see the planet and several moons around it. The kids thought that was great and one mom looked at me and asked... "Did you just show us the moons of Jupiter". I could see at least one kid look at it, look up at the sky, look at the telescope, and sort of put it all together.
The DSLR has better image quality, the image is falling directly on the sensor, the noise is very low, and there's a digital zoom option that works well.
Except a DSLR can't make an image that they take on their own device and walk away with it to immediately post to socials. that's the thing that draws them in.
A DSLR image needs to be processed to bring out the true qualities of the image. Also, a DSLR's tiny little pixels while a literal shit ton of them means that objects like planets resolve very small in the image. That's why most plantery images are still popular to use webcam level cameras.
Except live view is just that, live just like your eye on the scope. To really get the benefits of a DSLR, you want long exposures like 20sec or longer to really pull in those photons. Then you probably want some auto-guiding to get longer to avoid trails, blah blah.
So other than planets, live view will just show the same thing you can see through the eyepiece (black and white). If you're zooming in on the digital zoom, maybe you need a larger selection of eyepieces? a nice 9° or similar?
I have a scope that was bought specifically for DSO imaging, so when I point it at the moon, the full disc is maybe 25%-30% of my frame in prime photography with my DSLR. Which is still cool as most scopes are so zoomed into the surface you have to scan around to see the full disc, which is also cool in its own right. with a 30° eye piece, the full disc is simply stunning. that same eyepiece looking at jupiter/saturn has them very very small but still easily identifiable. switching to a 15° gets to the point i need ND so the moon doesn't blind you, but brings the planets into a much less disappointing view.
but at the end of the day if someone looks at whatever you show them and is engaged, then by all means continue. definitely not suggesting "you're doing it wrong" at all
You use the ISO setting (which is Gain on a webcam, often not a changeable paramter) which is much better than your eye on the scope. For example, looking at M42 through the Live View, you can easily see all the colors and fainter parts that aren't visible through an eyepiece. It's clearly picking up light the eye doesn't process or report to the brain through an eyepiece.
I'm not using an eyepiece. I have the DSLR at prime focus. The reason digital zoom works (to give more details) is because the LiveView screen doesn't have the screen resolution to show all the data.
Trust me, I spend a lot of time doing this (I build automated telescopes, solarscopes, microscopes for fun). The DSLR sensors beat all the webcam sensors (I'm still trying to find an affordable sensor board with good specs, for example, the Sony StarVis, that I can integrate so I don't need to mount a damn DSLR any longer- they're too big and heavy and need too much power).
I think there's two camps- one that really like eyepieces for the amazing results you can get with bright objects, and one that likes to look at digital images in real time, or later.
At that point, you might as well take an HDMI out connected to a larger screen to make it even more visible to those that wander by. I've seen a group do this with a camera designed for purpose that has software running stacking so that the longer the image is being viewed the better the image. They then project this for a larger visible image. Sounds weird as projector == bright light which is frowned up, but they always setup in a way that is not disturbing and since the image projected is pretty dark it's not as bad as one might think. They do everything they can to never blast white.
As far as wowing people, it's pretty impressive. Once they go to the next celestial object, you can watch as the image stacking starts working as you see the fainter object continue to become more and more distinct.
I think the weight is really the biggest problem. Even fairly light DSLRs weigh a bit, and you'll soon start stacking counterweights. (Which has a lot of potential to amplify vibrations :)
Most mounts can take the amount of weight of your scope plus a DSLR as you probalby have more mount than scope (if you've purchased well), and if you're using an equitorial mount, you using counter weights already. The worst part of the weight is on the focus tube itself. Whenever I'm using my DSLR, I determine where the scope will be pointing and position my scope and camera rig so that it is never going to rotate so that the camera is on top facing down putting all of it's weight on the focus tube screw locks. I always try to position it so that it is hanging to the side. I've made that mistake only once.
I still don't get why "camera on top" is problematic, though - unless you're using Newtonian/Refracting? Is there something I'm missing where I'm setting myself up for disaster due to my ignorance?
Oh, I forget people still try to use AltAz for imaging. You have my sympathies for the troubles endured.
I didn't have the focus tube screws locked tight enough. I walked away from my rig for the comforts of my bed while the gear worked through the night. When I returned to the rig, I found that due to the way the rig was rotated in/on the mount ended with the camera directly ontop of the optical tube. Since the screws were not tight enough, the weight of the camera pushed the focus tubes into their most compact state. This clearly blew focus on all of the images from when ever it started to move. I have some lovely out of focus shots of a total eclipse for sale if you're interested ;-)
After that, I learned to manualy rotate my rig through the motion it will undertake through out the night in advance so that the camera is not side slung with the weight never to come straight down like that. I also try to arrange it so that it is always adding tension to the weight so that it is not pulling against the motion.
> To really get the benefits of a DSLR, you want long exposures like 20sec or longer to really pull in those photons.
A lot of modern smartphones support long (~30s) exposures, with compensation for motion during the exposure. Under the right conditions, they can take some very nice night sky photos -- and I suspect they'd do very well on the end of a telescope, too.
I believe so. The phone can compensate for its own physical motion during an exposure (e.g. when being held in shaky hands); proper motion should be no different. If anything, it's easier, because it's so smooth. :)
It looks like most of it is just about astrophotography and astronomy in general. There is some specific to smartphones, but even a lot of the example images Hubble/professional images taken with professional equipment. Unless I'm just not seeing it somehow, it seems to be completely lacking in how to affix your phone to your telescope, which would probably the most important thing to know specific to phone photography. Additionally, focusing is a huge issue with phone cameras when dealing with low light astrophotos, and I didn't see anything on that.
The amount of nerdiness in this is amazing I’m so excited to read it! Especially with the new crazy zoom functions on phones and aligning them easier with telescopes !
I thought about making a very lightweight star tracker for my phone - if you took that with you and a way to mount it (like a small tripod) and then had the phone shoot a raw timelapse of whatever maximum exposure is possible (say 30 seconds) then you could do a track + stack and come out with great results. You would need to stand in place for probably about 30 minutes minimum or more to get enough photos
https://ai.googleblog.com/2019/11/astrophotography-with-nigh...
You can try it out on any recent Pixel device by holding the phone very still (probably need to mount it) when it's dark. You can get incredible images with no additional effort, just pointing it up at the sky.