Sunspot 1057 with an iPhone 3Gs!

So one of the great things about my new solar telescope is that it is a projection system so astrophotography fairly easy. Today I wanted to take a look at Spot 1057 which has doubled in size since I saw it yesterday. I was able to take an image with my iPhone using the Sunspotter Telescope as it projected the image on a piece of paper. The reason the image has grain is because of the nature of the paper. The Image was edited using GIMP 2.6.6. (Levels, Unsharp Mask, Transform).


There is the raw image:


Here is an image of the sunspotter telescope:


Other raw images:

Sunspotter becomes Moon Spotter and SLR Imaging on a Sunday Evening

News: Annie M. had a group of people over to her house last night in celebration of the Moon's Occultation of the Pleiades. She was able to take some images and stack them using HDR processing and they were published on Spaceweather.com. Congrats to my fellow amateur astronomer and friend for getting published... and it was exciting being there as she was taking those images!


Ok... so Annie inspired me to try some imaging...
I spent the last few hours of my spring break enjoying the night sky. I decided to try my newly purchased Sunspotter Solar Telescope on the moon... and what do you know it works! Now I need to modify it to hold a Regal Finder... and I'll be able to trace the moon. The only issue is that the image isn't bright enough... I need to find me a nice 4" or 6" objective and make a folded projected refractor for lunar observations. (More on that later!)

Image of Sunspotter not being used correctly:


I decided to take some images of the Sunspotter with my D-SLR camera and then I decided to try my hand at some astrophotography. I've been toying around with the idea of getting a Astrotracker for my DLSR but haven't been able to justify to $600 cost. Here I was trying my best to image without a tracking mount. The following images were taken with my Canon 50D, and a 400mm f/4 L lens and 1.5x teleconverter. I used mirror lock up and a Velbon Carbon Fiber tripod. I triggered the camera using a remote shutter cord.

Moon


Orion:


Clusters:



Cassiopeia and "E.T."


ISS PASS... some tripod movement... in this one



Pleiades

My New Sunspotter Telescope