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PSA: Stop using your phone to take pics of the moon through a telescope
Honestly, I spent 6 months getting blurry moon shots with my iPhone held up to the eyepiece. I tried 5 different camera apps and even taped my phone to the scope once. Ngl, a cheap $15 mount from Amazon that clips onto the eyepiece changed everything. My crater detail went from a fuzzy blob to actually seeing the Tycho impact rays. Anyone else struggle with phone-to-telescope alignment tricks?
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margaret_flores171mo ago
oh man, the tape thing - I tried that too and it was a disaster, phone kept sliding off and I almost dropped it into the mud. seriously though, that cheap clip mount changed my whole stargazing game, without it I was just getting shaky blobs that looked like a potato in space. the Tycho crater rays are definitely the payoff once you get the alignment right.
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john4301mo agoTop Commenter
hey once I started using a timer delay on the phone camera it helped a ton with the shake, just a two second pause and the whole moon came out crisp.
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Disagree on the timer trick. Tried that for months and it just made me miss the perfect focus window while the moon drifted out of frame. The real breakthrough for me was ditching the phone entirely and getting a dedicated planetary camera. Even a cheap $50 USB one plugged into a laptop blows phone shots out of the water. You can actually stack frames in software and pull out detail that no phone mount can touch. That Tycho crater you mentioned looks way better with 500 stacked frames than any single shot.
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