Baby Steps with Saturn

Incremental improvement is the name of the game. Here is a collage of two iPhone photos through my telescope eyepiece. This technique is called digiscoping (pointing a digital camera through the eyepiece of a telescope), which is a form of afocal photography (putting a camera where your eye would be behind a complete optical system), and it's pretty useful in limited situations.

The hardest part is holding the camera steady over the eyepiece. While there are some iPhone mounts available, for this latest attempt I used a tripod to hold my iPhone steady looking down through the eyepiece.

My previous attempt is on the left, and I actually took it during my "first light" night out with the scope, and I took it handheld without a tripod. On the right, my latest attempt with the camera on a tripod. I took a 30 second video and then took a screenshot of the best frame. (Yes, I do plan on stacking the video in Registax, but after a few frustrating attempts I called it a night. Not sure if the image is too small to find alignment points, or if the whole thing is in the wrong format).

Saturn with iPhone through eyepiece on Meade 285 refractor