Later on Monday evening (the 2nd January) I thought I would have a go at photographing the moon using my mobile camera (a Samsung Galaxy A21s) and my Orion OMC-140 Maksutov-Cassegrain. I have heard that it is possible to get quite good pictures by holding the camera lens up to the eyepiece of a telescope and taking a picture 'afocally'. The difficulty in doing this by hand is getting the telescopes image of the moon lined up with the camera of the phone and then holding it steady enough so that a picture can be taken. However, after some experimentation I did get one shot that I thought was pretty good:-
Here I used a Celestron 25mm eyepiece and the camera settings were 1/50s at f/2, ISO40. This was how I saw the image in the eyepiece. I was using a star diagonal, so even though North is at the top East is to the right and West to the left (which is the opposite way to which we usually see the moon with the naked eye). I was really impressed with the results and may try and do more work with my phone camera, perhaps purchasing a holder that can attach to the eyepiece to keep everything steady. If you 'click' on the image you can get an enlarged view which will show more of the detail of the 'seas', mountain ranges and, of course, craters.
All text and images © Duncan Hale-Sutton 2023
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