Orion 5303 instruction manual Taking Photographs with SteadyPix Afocal Adapter Your iPhone

Figure 11. An iPhone afocal close-up image of the lunar surface captured with an Orion StarMax 90mm Maksutov-Cassegrain at 62x magnification.

You can check the alignment by turning on the camera app in your iPhone to view through the camera lens and the attached telescope eyepiece. You should see a distinct, round (but possibly clipped) “field of view” centered on the iPhone’s display (Figure 9). If needed, you can adjust the position of the L-bracket and eyepiece clamp until the field of view appears cen- tered in the display. (Any objects in the field of view will not be in focus.)

7.Now you’re ready to install the eyepiece and iPhone assembly into the telescope’s focuser. Carefully insert the eyepiece into the focuser or star diagonal and secure it firmly with the locking setscews(s) (Figure 10).

CAUTION! The SteadyPix and iPhone combination adds additional weight to your telescope and eyepiece. Make sure that the eyepiece and any diagonal and Barlow lens are firmly secured in place! Failure to do so could result in a dropped iPhone!

8.With the telescope aimed at a fairly bright object and with the camera app turned on, use the telescope’s focuser to bring the object into focus.

9.If you have trouble achieving focus, you may have to adjust the spacing between the iPhone’s camera lens and the eyepiece lens. This is done by adjusting the eyepiece clamp position on the slotted L-bracket arm, using the lens height thumbscrew. If the slot on the L-bracket does not provide enough travel, the height of the eyepiece

can be adjusted further by sliding it forward or back in eyepiece clamp, and tightening with the clamp bolt.

If the image is not centered in the eyepiece or the image does not appear clearly, try re-adjusting the telescope focus and the

Eyepiece field of view in camera app

Eyepiece

Figure 9. Position the telescope eyepiece so that its field of view is centered on the iPhone’s display.

a.

b.

Figure 10. Inserting the eyepiece with iPhone attached into the star diagonal. Before doing this be sure that the diagonal is tightly secured in the telescope!

SteadyPix adjustment points. It’s takes a little time initially to get everything adjusted just right, so be patient. After a couple of sessions, you’ll get the hang of it.

Taking Photographs with the

SteadyPix Afocal Adapter and

Your iPhone

Moon: Our closest neighbor in the solar system is dazzling through even a very small telescope. The SteadyPix will allow you to take beautiful images of the whole Moon or closeups that showcase the craters, mountains, or maria (Figure 11). Single snapshots work well and multiple shots can be stacked later in a program such as Registax to increase the signal-to- noise ratio and dynamic range of the image. Also, you can take video and then stack a series of individual video frames.

Bright Planets: The bright planets Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn also make excel- lent targets for afocal photography. Try using a higher power eyepiece and maybe a Barlow lens to boost the magnifica- tion – planets are tiny objects in the sky!

You’ll need a steady atmosphere, i.e., good “seeing,” to get sharp planetary images. The iPhone’s display will allow you to show off your target object to friends and passers-by – no waiting in line at the eyepiece!

No need to stop at Saturn, though. At least one amateur astronomer has captured the dis- tant planet Neptune with his iPhone and an 8" Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope!

Deep-sky Objects: Most deep-sky objects are extremely difficult to photograph using afo- cal photography. Try working with brighter objects such as M42 (Orion Nebula) or M13 (Hercules Cluster). You will likely need a mount that tracks the motion of the sky so that you can take “long” exposures using a 3rd-party app that offers that capability (try Slow Shutter by Tomoki Kobayashi), and you will have to stack multiple images to get a good final image.

Sun: If you have a proper solar filter to cover the front of your telescope, you can get ter- rific images of sunspots on the surface of our nearest star in the daytime with your iPhone. Sunspots are constantly changing, so shooting them is always interesting and a lot of fun.

Nature/Terrestrial: The SteadyPix can be used to take through-the-telescope photos and videos of distant subjects in daylight.

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