Crescent Moon, Sep 25, 2016

A Crescent Moon on September 25, 2016. 6 in F/8 Newtonian, 25mm Plossl, HTC 3.2 megapixel camera phone.
The Waning Crescent Moon on September 25, 2016. 6 in F/8 Newtonian, 25mm Plossl, HTC 3.2 megapixel camera phone.

I took this shot on the morning of September 25, 2016.  I was trying out my new Smartphone Digiscoping Adapter, which is a mount for most kinds of camera phones to a telescope.

The adapter was hooked to a 6″ F/8 Dobsonian with a 25mm Plossl eyepiece.  This device just clamps onto the barrel of any eyepiece and gets the lens of the camera phone centered right over the eyepiece lens.   I was able to get a stable view so that I could focus and compose the shot better with my low end camera phone.

I did not have much exposure control with the old phone I was using for this.   I had the settings at -2.0 stops under and it still overexposed the limb area.  I hope to replace my old phone with something better in the near future that will let me do manual exposure control.

Even with a better phone, the moon and maybe a bright planet are really all you can take with this kind of setup, since there is no tracking with a Dob and most camera phones are not sensitive enough to take snapshots of astronomical objects like nebulae, star clusters and galaxies.  Hopefully, one day that will change.

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