stella_baker•17d agoProlific Poster

The Orion Nebula looked totally different on a real telescope vs my phone camera

I spent 6 months taking photos of M42 with just my phone through a cheap eyepiece, thinking it looked pretty good. Then I went to a star party last Saturday and someone let me look through their 8-inch Dobsonian. I literally gasped when I saw the nebula was pink and had that dark cloud in the middle, not just a blurry gray smudge. My phone was capturing maybe 1% of the actual color and detail that was there. Now I'm saving up for a proper DSLR setup because I want to see what else I've been missing. Has anyone else been shocked by how different a target looks in person versus their first attempts?

2 comments

2 Comments

hugo82516d agoTop Commenter

That 8 inch Dobsonian hit me harder than I expected too. I remember the first time I saw Saturn's rings through one, I honestly thought the owner had stuck a picture inside the eyepiece as a joke. I had been aiming my little 70mm refractor at it for months and getting a tiny blurry oval, so seeing the actual separation between the rings and the planet was like discovering space was real for the first time. You don't realize how much your phone is just guessing at the light until you see it with your own eye. The pink is what got me too, that neutral gray from the camera just doesn't exist in real life. Good luck with the DSLR upgrade, just brace yourself for the next level of disappointment when you realize how much processing goes into those pretty pictures.

simonb9216d ago

My buddy borrowed my dob one time and swore he saw a satellite go right past Saturn while looking through it. Took him a minute to realize it was just a floaty in his eye. @hugo825 nailed it though, that first real view just rewires your brain.