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Capturing the moon!!

moon on DEC 2024
    moon on Jupiter and moon conjunction DEC 2023

Don't worry about the title saying capturing the moon. I am not the Gru from "Despicable Me" or have minions by my side. All I have done is capture the image of the moon in my Android camera with the help of a telescope.

The tools I used for this are listed below
  • Celestron 130 eq (equatorial mount)
  • android camera (any device released after 2017 will do)
  • 10 mm eyepiece that came along with the telescope
two other things came with it 20 mm eyepiece and 2x celestron omni Barlow lens. the pictures I have used here were captured between 22-dec-2023 and 25-dec-2023.




first picture of the moon with my telescope


It is not the best image out there but the efforts are honest, I just canceled a road trip plan to buy my first telescope. sent the next few days to understand the mount working and the proper initial setup to track objects.

the telescope is largely debated for its ability in many forums, I think if you are new and have some spare time for watching the stars and identifying them just buy it. 

   

moon craters with Barlow 2x lens with 10mm eyepiece 

things to understand correctly,
  • polar alignment of your mount depending on your location (a lot of videos suggested to refer to content created by your local enthusiast)
  • properly aligning the finderscope(if wrong you wont be able to properly point your telescope to objects you want)
  • the basic working of the equatorial mount is not to rough handle the mount the metal parts look strong but they bend on the application of easy force, if it is hard to turn the equipment you are doing it wrong.
note: the moon craters are not fully in detail as I captured all the pics during the full moon period when the brightness is very high and we don't get the realization of the depth of those craters. during the moon phase, we can observe those craters better because of the shadows.

I used GIMP for processing these images and the deep sky stacker tool, but for some reason, the results of stacking the image didn't yield much detail. maybe I am doing something wrong, I am working on it, it is a hobby, and the moon and other planets won't disappear soon. let's see how much I can improve.


Happy learning!! 😄
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