Nevermind, it's not the app, it's the compass on my phone, it's gone crazy.

 

That's good since I already bought it! I've only played with it for a few minutes so far. It did seem to lock up at one point. Not sure if I did something or it's acting squirrelly.

 

hmmm, I didn't play with it last night except to see if the directions were right with where I was looking and it was after I got my compass straightened out. I didn't have any problems with it before (almost a month, used daily) so hope I don't now, if I do it's a bad update.
My compass was goofed up, I guess I laid my phone down on top of a magnetic screw driver in the shop. Tried the figure 8 thing, no good. I had no east. West was west and east too. North was kind norteast and south was southwest. With it screwed up, the app kept telling me every direction was south. I finally turned the phone off and left it about ten minutes then turned it back on, everything was right then. Hope it stays that way.

 

Glad to hear your iPhone is back to normal!

The App seems to be acting normal this morning. Maybe it was 'operator headspace' last night. It seemed to have locked up when I was viewing details on an object. Maybe I just screwed up.

I didn't get the scope out last night. My son has play practice and/or performance every night this week. Hopefully I'll get it out this weekend. According to 'Star Walk,' Jupiter seems to be in good position for viewing early in the evening.

Speaking of Jupiter... There's no way to know exactly which moon you're looking at without a chart. Sky & Telescope has a chart every month which shows the position of each of the Jovian moons throughout the month. It's probably available online as well. Or maybe with their App - S&T Skywalk. I haven't downloaded it yet; some reviewers stated that it had major issues after the latest update.

I'm interested in following your foray into astrophotography. I've been wanting to get a digital SLR for some time now for both terrestrial and astrophotography. All we have is a simple point-n-shoot type now. The Canon Rebel series seems to be a good cross between performance and price. Please post additional pic's as you experiment in the future. I'd like to see / hear how it goes. Thanks!

 

I tried it again after I posted earlier and everything seemed to work fine.

I just got my camera back. It was acting weird so tried out my service plan I bought from Best Buy (I bought the 4 yr "everything" plan which I never do, the camera is 3.5 yrs now). They sent it off for repairs but all they could find wrong was that the sensor needed cleaning. Haven't had a chance to really check it out yet.

 

...Looking forward to seeing your future pictures of `Space : ) Interesting/informative thread 4-Sure...Thanks..
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Did you get the scope and camera out this weekend, Becky? Any new pic's?

I had good intentions to get mine out, but was too exhausted by the time we got home each night. Our son had play performances every night Thur - Sunday. Maybe this week!

My wife agreed wholeheartedly about getting a new digital SLR camera. Her point-n-shoot is dying. So maybe I can finally try my hand at astrophotography as well. It'll probably have to wait 'til after Christmas though. All good things in due time...

 

Yay - gonna get ya a new DSLR. Most on the astro forum use a Canon with a liveview. Mine doesn't have the liveview but I think all of the newer ones have it. You can also connect it to a laptop and use the EOS Utility (comes w/Canon) and control the camera from there and see it on the monitor. I haven't tried it yet but plan to.

Took the scope out but no pics. Was going to but the moon had everything pretty washed out - I wanted to take a pic of Orion (just wide angle with camera) and then the dang clouds rolled in. Supposed to be cloudy the rest of the week here I think. Hoping south Texas will be clear Wed, Thurs and/or Fri night, haven't checked the forecast there yet.

 

Yeah, the full moon makes most other observing almost impossible. I was hoping to get out and check out Jupiter. It's well placed for evening observing. But it's not going anywhere fast. I'll have time.

I've read lots of good reviews about the Canon EOS line, both for terrestrial and astrophotography. That's what we're looking at getting. Just don't know exactly which model yet.

The mount w/your scope probably gives you an advantage over me for astrophotos. I have a great Stellarvue alt-azimuth mount for general visual observing and an old Orion Skyview equatorial mount with RA tracking motor for higher power observing. The alt-az should be fine for bright objects that require only short exposures. The Skyview is fairly stable and tracks ok, but it's relatively low quality, not perfectly smooth; not suitable for long exposures. I plan to make use of 'stacking' software to combine multiple short exposures. All I can do is try and see what happens.

 

From what I understand, even the people that have really good tracking capabilities, still use relatively short exposures and stack. There is soooo much to learn about adjusting the photos and what to take - lights, darks, flats, subs, etc., needless to say I'm pretty confused, LOL. I'm going to try to find a good book. Wonder if they make an idiots guide for AP? I learned to build websites using one of those idiots guides, I'll have to check on an AP one.