Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

MacRumors Giveaway: Win a Telescope for Your iPhone From iCandiApps

MacRumors

MacRumors

macrumors bot
Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
68,283
39,094



For this week's giveaway, we've teamed up with iCandiApps to give two MacRumors readers a chance to win one of the company's first hardware products - the Night Sky MiniScope.

The Night Sky MiniScope is a telescope that connects to your iPhone and works in conjunction with the Night Sky app to help you gaze at and capture images of celestial bodies like stars and planets. It has offers 50x optical zoom and 500x digital optical zoom when paired with the app.

miniscope.jpg

Priced at $349, the MiniScope comes with a telescope, a tripod, and an iPhone case to connect the device to your phone. It's compatible with the iPhone 4, 4s, 5, 5c, 5s, 6, and 6 Plus.

miniscopefeatures.jpg

Night Sky MiniScope is easy to use, lightweight, small, sturdy, powerful and sublime. Everything you need is supplied in a handcrafted luxurious box. Night Sky MiniScope works seamlessly with the Night Sky stargazing apps.

Locate a celestial object with the Night Sky app and get the perfect image with Night Sky MiniScope.
Click to expand...
The Night Sky MiniScope not a tiny device, but it's small enough that it's able to be carried in a bag or backpack to be taken on trips and star-viewing excursions. It can capture some impressive photos of the moon and stars.

mooniminiscope.jpg
Moon photo captured with the Night Sky MiniScope​

To enter to win one of two Night Sky MiniScopes, use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter your email address. Your email address will not be given to any third party and is used solely for contact purposes. You can earn additional entries by subscribing to our weekly newsletter, subscribing to our YouTube channel, following us on Twitter, or visiting the MacRumors Facebook page. Due to the complexities of international laws regarding giveaways, only U.S. residents who are 18 years of age or older are eligible to enter.

This contest will run from today (July 17) at 1:00 p.m. Pacific Time through 1:00 p.m. Pacific Time on July 24. The winner will be chosen randomly on July 24 and will be contacted by email. The winner has 48 hours to respond and provide a shipping address or a new winner will be chosen.

Article Link: MacRumors Giveaway: Win a Telescope for Your iPhone From iCandiApps
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2015/07/17/macrumors-giveaway-night-sky-miniscope/
The site has some images taken with it:

http://www.icandiapps.com/icandiapps/gallery/

If anyone has some experience with astrophotography I'd love to know how this measures up to other options on the market and what you think of the images. I'm planning to follow this giveaway up with a review, but this is the first telescope I've used.

Edit: Here are some photos I took using it, if anyone wants to know how they come out. http://imgur.com/a/8gHrM
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: yadmonkey
joelisfar said:
My father-in-law makes telescopes and I always try taking photos through the eyepiece with my iPhone. Here’s one of the best ones I've taken
Click to expand...

Stellar photo!

I do the same with my Meade ETX-90 and iPhone. Here's a photo I took of a recent lunar eclipse.

1186784_10152321506917121_7016968820899005919_n.jpg


I simply hold the phone up to the telescope's eyepiece when taking photos. Getting the camera lens to properly align with the image coming out of the eyepiece has been a bit troublesome, though. Lots of trial and error. How have you managed to pull it off? Are you using some sort of camera mount?
 
  • Like
Reactions: yadmonkey, Deelron, MaximizedAction and 3 others
jclo said:
The site has some images taken with it:

http://www.icandiapps.com/icandiapps/gallery/

If anyone has some experience with astrophotography I'd love to know how this measures up to other options on the market and what you think of the images. I'm planning to follow this giveaway up with a review, but this is the first telescope I've used.

Edit: Here are some photos I took using it, if anyone wants to know how they come out. http://imgur.com/a/8gHrM
Click to expand...
I'm not very impressed. I bought a HookUpz adapter for my dirt cheap binoculars and I get comparable images for far less money.

I'm missing a very important information about this gadget, namely aperture size. It's pretty much the only thing that matters for astronomy. That is, how much light does it collect? If it collects more, then you won't get a blurry image since you can keep the exposure short.
Magnification is secondary.

And.. Key to digital astro photography is stacking. I.e. take a lot of short exposures and stack them in dedicated software. It reduces noise and enhances sharpness without having to do complicated long exposures, which is tricky since the sky moves and you have to keep the telescope really really still.
 
SvP said:
damnit, did all the **** needed, US resudents only. Stupid law nonsense.
Click to expand...
Seems like that was pointed out fairly clearly (in bold) in the article itself (no need to do much of anything to already know that beforehand).
 
japanime said:
I simply hold the phone up to the telescope's eyepiece when taking photos. Getting the camera lens to properly align with the image coming out of the eyepiece has been a bit troublesome, though. Lots of trial and error. How have you managed to pull it off? Are you using some sort of camera mount?
Click to expand...

Great shot of the eclipse! Cool what we can do with phones (and scopes) these days!

I've been taking the same approach, lots of trial and error here too. I would love to find a good way to mount the phone to the scope so I could just worry about pointing the scope and not trying to hold the camera at just the right spot. But until I find such a thing I'll stick with the casual approach… burst mode is pretty helpful because I usually only hold it in the right spot for a split second.
 
  • Like
Reactions: japanime
joelisfar said:
My father-in-law makes telescopes and I always try taking photos through the eyepiece with my iPhone. Here’s one of the best ones I've taken:

a23PbaN.jpg
Click to expand...
Trying out a new telescope I got the idea to do the same thing using my iPhone. Didn't spend as much time on it and it was rather hard to catch it to begin with. Ended up with this:
 

Attachments

  • image.jpeg
    image.jpeg
    150.1 KB · Views: 6,374
  • Like
Reactions: brianlbaker
joelisfar said:
Great shot of the eclipse! Cool what we can do with phones (and scopes) these days!

I've been taking the same approach, lots of trial and error here too. I would love to find a good way to mount the phone to the scope so I could just worry about pointing the scope and not trying to hold the camera at just the right spot. But until I find such a thing I'll stick with the casual approach… burst mode is pretty helpful because I usually only hold it in the right spot for a split second.
Click to expand...

I completely forgot about burst mode. That alone is a great tip. Thanks!
 
C DM said:
Seems like that was pointed out fairly clearly (in bold) in the article itself (no need to do much of anything to already know that beforehand).
Click to expand...
But it'd be nice if sometimes we saw giveaway offers for international countries too.
 
joelisfar said:
My father-in-law makes telescopes and I always try taking photos through the eyepiece with my iPhone. Here’s one of the best ones I've taken:

a23PbaN.jpg
Click to expand...

Wow...... that is freaking awesome! Let alone the fact you just put the camera up to the eye piece. This shot is pretty darn remarkable given how you did it. Nicely done.
 
For good measure - here's mine taken with my telescope and iPad Air 2 camera

11665454_10153943049624409_4613943726080369201_n-jpg.570368
 

Attachments

  • 11665454_10153943049624409_4613943726080369201_n.jpg
    11665454_10153943049624409_4613943726080369201_n.jpg
    34.7 KB · Views: 351
C DM said:
Seems like that was pointed out fairly clearly (in bold) in the article itself (no need to do much of anything to already know that beforehand).
Click to expand...
I should have read the whole article, maybe better to start the article off with that line btw. US isn't the only country out there. Still, stupid law stuff. Global economy should be more open.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back