Hey, I'd actually use that. I build telescopes (see personal site in profile) and only do visual astronomy. I voluntarily prefer to use old-ish phones, i.e. currently I am using an iPhone SE 2022. Do you think the weak signal under the night sky would work with your plate solving ?
- Accurate up to within 10 arcseconds (1/360 of a degree)
- Computes coordinates in less than a second
For comparison, the sky moves 15 arcseconds per second. So without a motorized mount to keep the telescope on target, the accuracy will be short-lived.
Unsupported: Smartphone Eyepiece Adapter
Eyepiece adapters hold the phone’s camera over the eyepiece so you can photograph through the telescope. AstroHelm does not support this configuration. The field of view is typically too small for plate solving to work
But:
“After that, whatever I called for was in the field of view, even when I was using a 5mm eyepiece.”
They mean that the FOV seen by the phone through an eyepiece is too small to run a successful plate solve.
The comment of the user says "the plate solve was precise enough that the object I wanted was centered (for the observer, not for the phone) when I used a 5mm eyepiece" (which is usually an high-power, meaning tiny-FOV eyepiece)
Most pointing methods aren't accurate enough to correctly center an object at high power and require you to use a lower power eyepiece, nudge the object a bit, then switch to high power. I understand how you read it as slop but the two sentences aren't contradictory, and the user comment hints to an useful pointing tool :)
For more context, the other comment saying "I’m really impressed… guided me almost dead on to the double cluster when asked." is a bit funny, because the double cluster is easily seen naked-eye in suburban sky, which is as easy as it gets for deep sky objects. But the comment you quoted makes the app look good and I'm going to try it if the fall cloud cover ever goes away.
- Computes coordinates in less than a second
For comparison, the sky moves 15 arcseconds per second. So without a motorized mount to keep the telescope on target, the accuracy will be short-lived.
Pls fix (AI slop?):
But:“After that, whatever I called for was in the field of view, even when I was using a 5mm eyepiece.”
The comment of the user says "the plate solve was precise enough that the object I wanted was centered (for the observer, not for the phone) when I used a 5mm eyepiece" (which is usually an high-power, meaning tiny-FOV eyepiece)
Most pointing methods aren't accurate enough to correctly center an object at high power and require you to use a lower power eyepiece, nudge the object a bit, then switch to high power. I understand how you read it as slop but the two sentences aren't contradictory, and the user comment hints to an useful pointing tool :)
Edit : bad tenses and grammar fixes