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.
/article-new/2015/07/miniscope.jpg?lossy)
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.
/article-new/2015/07/miniscopefeatures.jpg?lossy)
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.
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.
/article-new/2015/07/mooniminiscope.jpg?lossy)
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.
Top Rated Comments
I do the same with my Meade ETX-90 and iPhone. Here's a photo I took of a recent lunar eclipse.
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?
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.
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