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Jupiter with a 70mm Mak

Celestron C70 Mini Mak Smartphone Afocal Jupiter
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Whats my best move in this case?
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Alien_Enthusiast avatar
Alien_Enthusiast avatar
Over the past couple of days I've been trying to capture Jupiter with my Celestron C70. Its a small maksutov design telescope with apertue of 70mm and focal length of 750mm. Im using a 23mm wide angle eyepiece with a triple barlow lens. Instead of camera Im using my iPhone 13 with a phone adapter. Here is the best image I was able to get so far, and for me the main problem is lack of clear focus and therefore inability to see the stripes or the red spot. What should I do? Is it worth trying the custom camera apps with ISO settings etc, or I need a better eyepiece? Or maybe my telescope is just not powerfull enough? Any advice is appriciated! Thanks! 
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Erlend Langsrud avatar
Erlend Langsrud avatar
1. It is probably too bright, so that the cloud belts are burned out.

2. There is some lateral color. This means:

A: Jupiter was low in the sky/close to horizon so that you get atmospheric dispersion.

or

B: The iPhone lens is not up to the task.


A dedicated cam, (like a modified webcam) is the best move IMO. It will make things so much easier.
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Alien_Enthusiast avatar
Alien_Enthusiast avatar
If the problem is in brightness, what could be done to reduce it? May adjusting camera settings like ISO fix it?
Joon Ren avatar
Joon Ren avatar
Hello, I've previously captured images of Jupiter and Saturn using an 8" Dobsonian and an iPhone 12 mini. What I did was use a good phone adaptor (Celestron XYZ) and an iPhone app called "ProCamera. RAW Photo and Video". It allows you to control the focus and brightness (ISO) levels as well as saving the images as RAW. I know video is commonly used but unless its lossless, RAW seems to do just fine if not better

My steps are:
1) Point to something like the moon or a lamplight to illuminate the eyepice
2) Adjust the phone with the XYZ adaptor until it fits perfectly onto the eyepiece
3) Point to the desired planet
4) Place the focus square and brightness circle in the center
5) Focus and adjust brightness
6) Start shooting raw frames and manually keeping the planet centered in the square triggered from (4)

I suggest practicing in the following order of difficulty: Moon, Saturn then Jupiter. Looking forward to hearing your progress!!
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