iPhone fun with the RedCat

With a clear night and poor seeing, I decided to try out the William Optics RedCat 250/51 mm telescope visually with a couple of eyepieces. I added the RedCat to my ultra portable kit because it can be used both visually and with a camera. Normally I use either my Sony a7iii full frame or a6300 crop sensor camera at prime focus in place of the diagonal and eyepiece, but tonight I decided to try out an iPhone 11 pro through the eyepiece in afocal mode. The Vixen SLV 4mm has an amazing 20 mm of eye relief. The Moon fills almost 2/3 of the 50 degree apparent field of view, ideal for full disk observation of the moon with this tiny telescope. Here is a quick afocal image of the view with an iPhone 11:

My other eyepiece for the Redcat takes advantage of the rich field view of this small scope capturing 5 degrees of sky. The TeleVue Panoptic 19mm has a 68 apparent degree field of view without the bulk of an ultra-wide eyepiece. I caught the Pleiades before they sank in the west. This afocal image with the iPhone 11 was captured in the auto-stacking night mode. It is vignetted because of the camera placement so this doesn't show the full field of view:

Here is the RedCat set up for visual use with its erecting diagonal and eyepiece.

Content created: 2020-02-12

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