The Blood Moon, November 7, 2022
My first attempt at photographing a lunar eclipse.
Meade (Telestar) 4.5" Newtonian Reflector
25mm Eyepiece
Samsung Galxy S22+ (Pro Mode)
Celestron NexYZ Universal Smartphone Adapter
Voice Activated Shutter Release
ISO, Exposure Length... all over the map, it's my first try.
This is when it started to get exciting!
Unfortunately, I did not record times, but the entire eclipse took four hours.
I had little confidence that these images were going to be any good since I was using my cell phone attached to the Newt with an adapter.
Using manual controls I couldn't take video with any measure of success, so I packed it up early, I didn't stay for the full eclipse, so I missed the Shazam! moment. Alas, this is the last frame I captured.
A Lucky Shot!
November 8, 2022
Fun Fact:
All the visible stars that we can see in the sky at night are in the Milky Way, from those we can see at night with the naked eye to those seen using giant observatories and orbital telescopes like the Hubble.
Source: Wikipedia
I snapped this two-second photo just before walking up onto the porch the morning after the eclipse. Snagged a bunch of cool stuff. I didn't find the meteor until I brought the image up in Photoshop.
The Orion Nebula is seen as the middle "star" in the "sword" of Orion, which are the three stars located south of Orion's Belt.
I cleaned up the image in Photoshop because I wanted a better look at what's inside the circle. Going after that with "more power" soon.
Optics
Fun Fact:
The earliest known telescope appeared in 1608 in the Netherlands, when a patent was submitted by Hans Lippershey, an eyeglass maker. Although Lippershey did not receive his patent, news of the invention soon spread across Europe. The design of these early refracting telescopes consisted of a convex objective lens and a concave eyepiece. Galileo improved on this design the following year and applied it to astronomy.
Source: Wikipedia
I feel challenged to capture the night sky with anything, and everything, right down to my little GoPro knock-off. Things could get weird.