Quarter of a Century After RV Kit Start and Astrophotography Tech.

[DeltaRomeo]

Nearly three decades ago, when I started construction of our family’s RV-6 I had this dream of taking my 10” SCT telescope to remote sites and doing deep sky astrophotography. That telescope was so big I could barely get it into the fuselage in my garage - and I was in my 30s. There's no way I could get it in there now. But technology has a way of catching up. The other day I was on an extra paper route as chief gear raiser / ice getter in the King Air, and ended up in a very remote part of Texas with no moon. A couple of minutes of research online and I got the following 1X image with my iPhone 17 Pro Max, propped up against my water bottle on the tailgate of a truck.

It's almost too much to handle how easy this was. I'll go ahead and include the help screen that showed me what settings to use.

The future is still bright on this astrophotography RV dream of mine. https://www.darkskymap.com/nightSkyBrightness will help.

M31 Andromeda Galaxy in the upper left quadrant. 2.65 million light years away (it’s 220,000 light years in diameter once you get there). Seen at an angle, the far side is nearly a quarter million years more mature.

My head hurts….

v/r,dr

 

[MikeinPhoenix]

Doug, amazing picture, especially given the equipment used! I share your interest in astrophotography having started a “billion” years ago when ultra fine grain film and film plates were still in use.

 

[DeltaRomeo]

Addendum:

I set a timer and ran out front for an Orion rising shot with my silhouette. Then sent it to a friend thinking I was all artist like. “Amazing what you can do now with a smartphone!”



He edited it and sent it back. “I know, smartphones, right?!?!”



60 yrs old and still in junior high….. LOL.

v/r,dr

 

[scsmith]

I used to chill Ektachrome 400 in dry ice, then stand with the manual tracking controls of our club 16" Newtonian in my hands, freezing in a big aluminum dome, trying to keep a guide star on the reticle of the spotting scope for an hour.

My friend Dale Bush, now retired, former RV-9 owner, now spends his time sitting in the warmth of his motorhome watching his laptop track an object that he found in his scope by typing in the name, taking hundreds of 30-second exposures which the computer software then 'stacks' into an image that is the equivalent of a multi-hour exposure.

An enterprising group in Texas set up a shed with a retractable roof on a remote dark-sky plot. They host hundreds of telescopes that are owned by people all over the country, who control their scopes remotely. Dale has a telescope there too.

Unlike my experience in the old days, you don't need a big telescope to do this modern deep-sky photography. What you need is very high quality optics. So 4"--6" refractors seem to be the order of the day. I think for under $2000, you can have a full set-up that will make pictures you would think came from Hubble.

 

[DeltaRomeo]

Steve check out https://dwarflab.com/pages/dwarf-mini-smart-telescope. Stacks multiple short shots w/software that assembles - all on your phone. I have one on preorder ($400). Very RV weight friendly and a good astrophotography solution you can throw in your backpack.

Crazy times. I know about Starfront Observatories in West Texas. Spectacularly innovative business model.

 

[Mike S]

Wow, pretty much parallels my interest------Orion 16" Dob reflector and 10" Meade LX200 SCT back in the late 80s.

Nowadays Meade 120 ETX sitting unused in the garage, (due to getting blurred images due to beginning of cataracts) and living quite close to a pretty nice dark sky area.

 

[DeltaRomeo]

....16" Dob reflector and 10" Meade LX200 SCT back in the late 80s.
....

Mike, mine was a 10" Meade LX200 also!!!! And I sold the 16" mirror blank I was going to grind as my 'next project' to buy a used pneumatic squeezer after I got my first ride in an RV. LOL.

Here's the 6" DOB I ground/made back in the early 90's (neighbor's kid looking at the Moon a few weeks back in our driveway). Spent 40 hrs walking around in circles grinding and polishing that mirror. Fun times!

Comforting that so many RV folks are also into astronomy <g>. FMI on telescope making: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_telescope_making

 

[RV6_flyer]

I missed this thread yesterday.

One of my old formation buddies "Christo" showed me some images he collected with his Seestar S50. Having wanted a telescope for several years, I ended up buying one thinking that "Astrophotography" would be better for me than a telescope. 15-minute stacked image of M31. Unit is small and light enough to fit in my RV-6 and can be controlled with iPhone, iPad, and Apple Silicon Mac. (The Mac may or may not work as they have not been testing the iPad app on the Mac but it has worked for me depending on the version.)



Christo turned me on to Astrospheric for weather conditions for star gazing. It has an app for the iPhone also.

 

[ravenstar]

Fantastic photo, Doug. I wish I had skies that dark here. I spent many hours back in the '80s with the local astronomy club grinding mirrors for equipment that eventually went to libraries to loan out. Then ground my own mirror with my young son for his class project. Later built my own CCD camera. Seems the skies are cloudy any time I'm free to get outside these days, but I still get the occasional chance to catch something neat. At least the cloudy days can be spent building an RV. Happy to see so many others sharing this interest!

 

[climbak]

It's pretty crazy how good phones are now. I almost won't even use my real camera for nighttime sky shots anymore. Here's one from the recent aurora here in CO. Handheld and unedited other than whatever the phone does on its own.