cool space pics with a phone and binoculars
hi folks. I'm here in the middle of nowhere on my own under blue skies which
are gonna be lovely beautiful star filled skies to see whether I can shoot
the Andromeda galaxy with this pair of binoculars and a mobile phone. As ever
I shall call on his musical darkness Lord Riktenstein to accompany us.
Rik's a long way he's in London Rick what can you do the intro
yeah that's it. here we go. let's do it
so I don't know anyone who shot something
three million light years away with just a mobile phone and binoculars
we're breaking new ground and to give us the best possible chance of success
I've left light polluted London and come to the dark skies of Devon is where my folks live
so what are we gonna do we're gonna use this phone that I'm filming
myself with now and an ordinary tripod not a tracking mount an ordinary tripod and
a pair of binoculars
and we're going to use the power of stacking where you stack lots of photos on top of each other to get a picture of
Andromeda the biggest galaxy in our neighborhood
and as ever win or lose, succeed or fail I'm going to show you the result
I've got a good feeling about this man.
The Equipment
this is it binoculars, phone, plastic thing to hold
the phone onto the end of the binoculars little metal bracket to hold the
binoculars onto the tripod and a tripod there we go that's all everything the
binoculars they cost me thirty pounds they're modern ones I believe modern
ones are better. They're fully multi-coated they've got back for prisms and they're
not too zoomed in. Nice wide angle to grab as much light as possible.
The other important piece of course is the phone now I have an Android HTC u11 I think
any phone will do it but one thing that you want you want to have a phone that
will record its data in RAW format that will give you every little last photon
that you capture will be saved in the raw format.If it converts it down to a
JPEG or a tiff or something else it just isn't so good so really fingers
crossed your phone will save things in RAW
and the icing on the cake is if
your phone is able to capture the deep reds and there's a pretty cool way of
finding out if it does won't forgot remote control well because remote
controls give off near infrared signal and also lots of hydrogen space gives
off a signal in there in the deep red and a hydrogen alpha wavelength so if
your phone can see the remote control signal coming out of the remote control
capture all that lovely hydrogen goodness
let's raid one good thing it's a lot lighter than my regular Astro says I
won't be able to bring everything inside is this the Hollywood I so is he gonna
work so to ignore the skies are looking a bit better so we can find out from
little tip align the phone with the binoculars before it gets dark it's just
easier all right so first job focusing
so the best thing to do is find a bright star and there's a really nice one over
there get it lined up in me other eyepiece and shit
yes it's appearing on the screen so all I've got to do is just adjust the focus
up-and-down and fits right okay it's good
next job find Andromeda how am I gonna do that
well the really super cool thing is that I can use my phone which is on the end
of my binoculars to do it because I can use Sky View free app I just asked it to
find Andromeda slightly like it's upside down
anyway galaxies Andromeda it's pointing me up so let's go up no it says there
recorded to the app that's all I'm drama to you let's see shall we
it's probably around
just a tiny bit outlook just that little bit out pretty good I say so I'm drawing
it it just looks like sort of faint fuzz and it's kinda you can kind of tell that
it's kind of the Galaxy itself is kind of angled you can see a faith person
like that very faint we're coming Andromeda just one more
thing to do set the exposure time start it off on let's be really hopeful shall
we eight-second capture now the longer our shots are exposed for the more light
we getting the better Andromeda will look but as a problem have a look at
this okay yep as we thought eight seconds
great we've got Andromeda look there it is the fuzzy blob problem is our stars
are trailing due to the Earth's rotation
here quite very trailing so the trick is to get as long an exposure as you can
without the Stars trailing too much two seconds Goods almost a trailing and we
can still just about see Andromeda all right two seconds is good two
seconds it is not very long is it now we've just got to take a lot of shots
and stack them on top of each other so we're gonna need three hundred exposures
three hundred the more the better really but you know can we be asked to do any
more than that I'm not sure we can to make it all a bit easier I downloaded
and intervalometer app which takes the pictures for me you'll definitely need
one of these it's all going quite well isn't it well at least it was till I
looked up at the sky
this could be mission failure because we go probably Houston
this is bonkers possibly you may barfing astrophotography doesn't work during a
snowstorm just putting that out there hours later god no I think if you can
see the beautiful view back hater or not or even as you can see me but it's lay
is cold hence the balaclava probably time to go
to bed I would have thoughts otherwise I'm gonna be useless tomorrow but before
I go I want to show you this incredible sight so I'm gonna use the mobile phone
to do a little time-lapse 30-second shots see if you can get it
look at that
after the hail and the snows turned out absolutely bloody amazing I have to say
I'm blown away by what this mobile phone can do all by itself can it do as well
with the binoculars so Andromeda is currently setting below the trees now
she goes by Andromeda the snow has delayed us too much we can't get it so
let's look for another target we can do a test at least what about this one
you're on there bina there you go lovely stars lovely now a Ryan is quite low in
the sky so I did my whole exposure test thingie and found out I could only do
one second long exposures see how many I can get prefer her to hit the hay all
right now first mini problem Orion is drifting across the field of
view fix is pretty simple just realign every few minutes so I managed to get
180 shots that's three minutes total exposure time probably not dead
absolutely dead okay 99 I'm going to bed I'll process you in the morning
next morning I didn't think much of what was going to happen
with this stack in these shots I've only got 157 that are usable anyway I stacked
them and this is what we've got I will provide a link to the free stacking
software deep sky stacker and you can grade it in this software - I actually
prefer to use another program called Astro pixel processor for the grading
right let's give this a little let's give this a little grade shall we
look look look I am beginning no no at all I think to see the actual structure
a little bit of structure the more I worked on it the better it got until
eventually you ended up with this which i think is incredible three minutes and
we're guessing oxygen and hydrogen and a whole bunch of stuff just imagine what
we could do with more exposure time I think if I go so we're really dark like
dark more tonight I think this is gonna work
500 two second shots I've Andromeda with my mobile phone and the pair of
binoculars and I think we'll get something my mom's calling me I gotta go
okay so see you tonight on Dharma
okay over the castle bridge around that more now I've been coming here all my
life but I've only been into a story for three years so this is my first time
observing here I'm excited there's a who's coming looks like
there's being a hunt first off is this tall
it's called constant or let's see if it's suitable shall we
yeah it was too windy up there so and in the valley mr. dig it's blooming cold
though look at me wrapping up setting up and takes approximately five minutes so
I've got nothing to do until it gets dark which is utterly utterly brilliant
who likes it he likes it in the country I do
I was just looking at the blue sky and I thought all that must be a plane no it's
a star there's a beautiful star just popped out and then I saw another one
and soon we'll be able to get started
there's the Milky Way our galaxy okay let's start imaging another more
distant one I'm doing 50 exposures and then I'm realigning and you can't see
anything and you can't see me and you just see this phone I've gotta tell you
the sound of the river and the stars in the Milky Way above me is just lovely
boys flirty cold that's just absolute nice I'm okay
so I've got 200 shots already another 300 to go it's exciting it was all going
very well but then something weird started to
happen to my mind when I turn this off with the bright light I am in pitch
darkness if you look down but looking up is full of jewels jewel I can even see
something with this light on but when I turn off its like wallop get the full
effect it's absolutely brilliant it was kind of like my test with the mobile
phone and binoculars wasn't really that important anymore all right off you go
bye I want to look at the Stars trust me it's amazing and you're probably a bit
jealous but you over jealous tomorrow morning when I drive into work for four
hours I don't know how it happened but I
became at one shall we say with the universe
I have just spent the last 20 minutes looking up looking up at the heavens
oh it's amazing I can see the Milky Way I can see some dark bands in the Milky
Way I can see all the stars all the stars that are bright I'm imagining that
those stars are quite near me and then I'm our galaxy we're looking along the
plane of our galaxy it's a very three-dimensional vision I can see not
what I remember the stars to be like it's all this just ah we are so little
the universe is so big and it's so beautiful it really is okay all done
this is gonna be fun with all the ice it's dead in the stream
stay in the stream
I'm skidding oh man take me skating come on come on
okay crossing to the other side of the right
all right not too bad I'm sailing now let's go
the device goodbye Dartmoor you were absolutely
brilliant so next morning spent four hours
traveling back to London and back to work they say I had to wait till the
weekend before I could do what I've been longing to due process and dromeda okay
so first thing we do is pop the images into a program called deep sky stacker
it's free and it's great you chuck in the images you tell it how many stars
you want it to align with and it stacks them on top of each other now it does
help if what you're shooting is in the middle of frame and Andromeda wasn't
unfortunately so I lost a few shots I was just able to stack 300 shots I won't
bore you with it now but if I'd have just got it a bit more sexual things
would have been better anyway 300 shots 10 minutes worth of exposure
time what do we got we've got Andromeda there she is
this pretty good isn't it but we can do better the background isn't flat it's
brighter at the centre so I use a program called Astro pixel processor
which is free for 30-days to flatten out the background then I
chucked it into Photoshop and got my final image okay I have my harshest
critic here to tell me what she thinks of this shot done with a mobile phone
and binoculars so here it is hats what do you think you think it's
kids better than most of my stuff okay there we go you've heard it here
first all right you can go if you want you heard it here first head late Rose
thinks it's good I think it's good too actually I think it's better than good
I think it's bloomin brilliance look at that dust lanes in a galaxy three
million light-years away and we got them amazing
cheers everyone good job good job I hope to see you taking pictures of all
sorts of things because it's quick it's cheap and it's perfect for like if
there's a half-hour break in the clouds or if you're hiking and you can't carry
your Astro stuff or maybe this could be your first Astro gig the thing that gets
you hooked anyway Cheers well done Oh
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