I got the Skyline Dobsonian in mid April, 2020. The main reason for getting it is my son is really into stars, galaxies, rockets, and pretty much anything space related. I figured it would be really cool for us to setup in the backyard and do some star gazing. Look at constellations, planets if possible. Also, there was a pandemic going on around the world. It just seemed like a good outdoor, night time hobby I could get into.
After a month and a half of messing around with Dobsonian decided to get the Celestron NexYZ 3-Axis Universal Smartphone Adapter (what a mouthful to say). It’s a little flimsy but it can hold the Iphone X still enough to take photos. It is cool that the Celestron adapter can move the Iphone X on 3-axis. The only slight issue I have is the knobs seem loose. Any slight shake will move the knobs just so slightly. As a result I’m realigning the phone with the eyepiece more than I would wish.
However, when I do get the IPhone properly aligned with the eyepiece I was able to get a decent pic of the moon in detail like the one above.
We look at the moon with the naked eye and it’s pretty cool in general. You have this astronomical body in the sky providing acting like a massive night light. Now looking at the moon through a telescope is pretty mind blowing. The moon is about 238,900 miles away and to be able to see craters and details of the moon’s surface from your own backyard is pretty awesome. So of course I wanted to try to take a pic of it even if it’s not the best pic.
My IPhone X is a little beat up. It was also the only camera I had at the time. Could the image be a little more clear? Sure. I didn’t do any processing of the image in photoshop in anyway. The image was just a straight up snap and click with the IPhone X through the Skyline 8″ Dobsonian.
This was just a start of a new hobby.