Posted by a bloke who clearly doesn't know what he's doing
So last Tuesday, me and my daughter decided to finally drag the telescope out into the backyard for the first time. It's been sitting under the bed for about six months collecting dust and judging me every time I walk past. She'd been talking about it for weeks amd we finally found it
Grabbed the scope, grabbed a jacket (not a thick enough one as it turned out), grabbed my daughter who was absolutely buzzing with excitement, and headed out the back.
Setting Up in the Dark
Now here's the thing nobody tells you. Setting up a telescope in the dark is a completely different experience to setting one up in the lounge room in the afternoon. Every single knob and fitting suddenly becomes a mystery. My daughter was holding the torch and asking me questions like "Dad why is it pointing at the fence" and honestly I had no good answers.
We found the moon eventually. Can't miss it really. There was a fair bit of cloud around which made it tricky, but also kind of magic. The clouds were drifting across the face of it and it looked absolutely brilliant. Like something off a movie poster.
The Brilliant Idea of Sticking My Phone to the Eyepiece
Right. So I had this idea to hold my phone camera up to the telescope lens and take some snaps. My daughter thought this was genius. Spoiler: it is significantly harder than it looks.
The trick is keeping the phone perfectly aligned with the eyepiece, which is basically impossible when you're also trying not to nudge the telescope and you're cold and your daughter keeps asking if she can have a turn. I reckon I took about forty photos. Three of them were any good. Maybe.
The Photos
Photo One: The Absolute Dud
This first one is... look... I'm including it because honesty is important. What you're looking at is basically darkness with a vague suggestion of something in the corner that might be the moon or might be my thumb. The dark circle framing around the edges is actually from the telescope eyepiece so technically that part is correct. Everything else is, well, atmospheric. My daughter laughed so hard at this one she nearly knocked the scope over.
Photo Two: Getting Warmer
Now we're talking. Sort of. This is the moon emerging through a gap in the clouds and this one actually has a bit of character to it. It's blurry as anything and slightly overexposed but you can clearly tell it's the moon and not my thumb. Progress. The way the light blooms out from behind the cloud gives it a ghostly, dramatic look that I did not plan but will absolutely take credit for.
Photo Three: The One That Actually Worked
This is the shot. I don't fully understand why this one worked and the others didn't, but I had a brief moment where everything lined up, the clouds parted, the phone sat right, I held my breath, and somehow the camera grabbed the moon in all its cratered glory. You can see the dark patches across the surface and the way light and shadow play across the craters. It's not exactly professional quality. But for a bloke standing in his backyard going cross eyed trying to line up a phone with a telescope at 10pm, I'll take it.
The Best Part
The best part wasn't any of the photos. It was my daughter grabbing my arm when the clouds cleared and she got her first proper look through the eyepiece and just went completely quiet. That kind of quiet kids do when something genuinely surprises them.
She looked for a long time. Then she looked up at the sky, then back through the scope, then at me, and said "it's actually real isn't it Dad."
Yeah mate. It's actually real.
We'll be back out there next clear night. I'm getting a proper phone mount so hopefully the next batch of photos won't be quite such a mixed bag. But then again, maybe the chaos is part of the fun.
Clear skies.
All photos taken on a phone held very unsteadily against a telescope eyepiece by someone who is very much learning as he goes.