iOptron SmartPhone adapter

[Canadian Roger]

My astronomy club (the Hamilton Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada) bought a couple of the new iOptron Universal Smartphone Eyepiece Adaptor last month. 
.  We intend to use them for public outreach.  As one adapter is set up with a visitors phone, the other one is taking an image of the Moon or planets.

To test out this process, I invited club members (who had never taken an astrophoto before) to the observatory and we used our 16" RC on a Paramount to take pictures of the Moon.

This turned out to be very simple to do.  We were able to use a variety of phones from Apple, Samsung and BlackBerry.  Once the telescope was focussed, there was no need to change it for each camera.

What is special about this kit is the eyepiece: it has a very short eye relief because you want the exit pupil to be co-incident with the iris of the camera.  This makes it almost useless to look through, except to get a quick focus, as the Mark 1 eyeball has to get very close to the lens.

The only issue was vibration.  Touching the screen to take a picture will vibrate the telescope, so if the phone is capable of it, use a self-timer. 

We're going to try other objects with it, like Jupiter and Saturn.  There are also several different programs that will take HDR images, for example. 

I also want to see if there is an app out there that will co-add the last x number of frames to try to get a little deeper into the sky.


I told my wife about it, and I have been informed that there is a good possibility of there being one that will be delivered by Father Christmas.  The cost in Canada is $65, which is in the neighbourhood of £36.

To give you an exaple of what it is capable of.  The first one is a single frame taken with an iPhone 4s, and the second with a Samsung (not sure which model).