Cell Phone AstroPhotography

[VictordeHolland]

At first I thought it were two airplanes, but they didn't move after 10 minutes. At home I checked Stellarium and it must have been Venus and Capella. You can also spot some other stars, but since I was holding the phone in my hand they're shown double.

My best guesses for:
Star bottom left (barely visible in the original picture): Betelguese
Duo top left: Castor and Pollux (Gemini)
Duo top middle/right: Merak and Dubhe (big dipper)

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by VictordeHolland

but since I was holding the phone in my hand they're shown double.

Nooo... that is the parallax what you see... they are parsecs away...

[Spherical Cow]

In the words of Maxwell Smart (TV show in the 1960s): "Missed it by THAT much!" I came so close to getting a transit of the International Space Station across Venus. The photo is 11 frames (every other frame at 60fps) from a video taken as the ISS skimmed past Venus in the western sky the other evening, using a 6-inch Dobsonian mounted telescope (no tracking) with a cell phone at the eyepiece again. The seeing was poor, with all the heat waves here in the desert, but Venus does indeed show its gibbous phase. I was only 30 feet from the calculated center line of the path on a dirt road out in the desert. I think the path must have been off by a few hundred feet, as the ISS missed Venus by about 1.5 Venus diameters (which was an angular diameter of only about 14 seconds.)

It's interesting that the solar panels look very slightly reddish- must be the gold color of the backside of the panels.

Norm

[xilman]

Congratulations! I wish I could get that close to something of astronomical interest.

No cigar, though. (I'm showing my age at least as much as you are.)

[Uncwilly]

WOW!

[Spherical Cow]

Another near-miss: this time it was the ISS skimming past Jupiter. But it was a beautiful evening, as the thunderstorms broke up just in time. The left half of the image is the naked eye view. The ISS is the white streak coming up from the south and transiting Jupiter. Scorpius is on the left, and the moon was just out of the frame on the right, illuminating the clouds. A 25-second exposure with a Canon Rebel camera on a tripod.

The right image is through the 6-inch telescope, using a cell phone camera. Frame rate of the video was 60 fps, but this stacked image only uses every other frame. Three of Jupiter's moons are visible; a fourth is also evident on very close examination. The bands and the Great Red Spot were very nice visibly, but for this, Jupiter is a little over-exposed in order to get the moons to show up.

Eventually, I'll be set up in exactly the right location to get a true transit. Only had to drive 1.5 hours to this one.

Norm

[xilman]

Originally Posted by Spherical Cow

The right image is through the 6-inch telescope, using a cell phone camera. Frame rate of the video was 60 fps, but this stacked image only uses every other frame. Three of Jupiter's moons are visible; a fourth is also evident on very close examination. The bands and the Great Red Spot were very nice visibly, but for this, Jupiter is a little over-exposed in order to get the moons to show up.

Nice work!

Some image processing may make the moons more visible.

[Spherical Cow]

Here's an interesting one, totally by accident. I was just taking some test exposures of the Pleiades, with the cell phone camera on the 6-inch Dob again. In looking through the 1-second tests,one of them (the first pic below) had a streak running through it; a faint satellite or meteor. I checked CalSky.com for that field of view, my location, and that exact time, and sure enough, it was a satellite.Turns out it is NORAD # 12586, also called Meteor 1-31, and is part of the rocket for a Russian launch in 1981. Only 2.8 meters in the longest dimension, and was 645 km away at the time.

The second image has the field of view from CalSky showing the calculated path on the left, and my cell phone image on the right, rotated and scaled to match CalSky. I've highlighted a few key stars for reference in each image. One of the satellite websites I checked seems to think this decayed earlier this year, but clearly its still up there.

Norm

[Uncwilly]

Very nice.

[Spherical Cow]

A little different cell phone shot this time- This is a Falcon 9 second stage rocket body, launched clear back in Dec 2010 (only the second Falcon 9 launched). At this point in its orbit, it was 8,700 km away, so its movement appears fairly slow; instead of zipping through the field of view in 1/2 second like the low-orbit ISS, this would take about 30 seconds to drift through. It is smaller (6m long) and fainter (mag 8), so it needs a longer exposure than I could get if taking video. So this time, I just took a picture about every 2 seconds, and then stacked the 14 images to get the result below. ISO 1000, 1/7th second exposures, Samsung Galaxy S6 phone on the eyepiece of a 6-inch reflector "beginner" telescope, with no tracking. Some distortion of stars near the edge of the field of view- its not exactly the most stable optical system ever pieced together.

The straight line of white dots is the Falcon, about every two seconds as it drifts through the field of view, with a few of the local times from the images added. I've labeled the two brightest stars in the field of view, and also circled some of the faintest stars that I can see in various versions of the processing that line up well with the star charts. One of them is 11.3 magnitude- pretty good for a cell phone at 1/7th of a second exposures.

Norm

[Uncwilly]

Well, if we are going to play this game...

Here is a shot from my mobile of a re-entry burn. The landing burn was not visible where I was. I have enhanced it, then downsized it and set the jpg to 90% to fit the requirements of the forum attachment size.


Next time I go to see a launch, I will plan on bringing the extra lens for my phone. (Or a real camera with a glass zoom.)