Can you use a Smartphone as a Telescope Finder?

In this video I’m showing how you can use your smartphone and a good astronomy app to better navigate the night sky using a manually controlled telescope.
Items shown in this video (affl):
Tri-Finderscope mounting bracket: amzn.to/3SJgONT
Smartphone holder (similar): amzn.to/3ES2cTB
Mini tripod ball head (similar): amzn.to/3ZJI4gE
Dovetail bar (similar): amzn.to/3XLkuyx
Stellarium free download:
stellarium.org/
Thank you for your support!

[@KristoferSanders]

Astrohopper ;) Easy. Amazing! For beginners (like myself), I would recommend a planisphere. It will help you with constellations identification AND whether it is in the north or south. Then, when you point, you can look and confirm the constellation, and the brightest star, and set your alignment. Then you are good!

[@Itsboxxx]

Such a clever idea. Thanks for the motivation!

[@Michael_Franke]

Cool advice, thank you. Very helpful video as always. I like the clean and well planned production of your clips. Good wording, excellent audio, no self-satisfied jabbering, and I can't believe that you don't have hundreds of channel members...

[@BogdanDamian]

@frankecharta Thank you! Glad you enjoyed this video as well 🙂

[@ohwell2790]

Just use Astro hopper and it really works much like Celestrons Star sense. And it has a alignment feature. I think it works primarily on Alt/Az mounts. But, may work on EQ's too. It is free.

[@timm2506]

Bogdan, always enjoyable to watch your videos! I have searched the internet once to find such a solution, but you just do it 😉💪.. I switched since a year or so, from visual to EAA with a dobsonian. So I'm not planning yet to add this to my setup. I use other possibilities to find the objects manually, but also through Stellarium. That tool is great! Even so, not doing visual anymore, but will keep following you 😀

[@cabbagecky]

Great video! Looks like you filled up my Christmas list to myself haha

[@MrMlyarber]

I'm going to try this, I think I got the brackets. Thanks for the advice!

[@mosesrodriguez1494]

Very informative. I'll have to give it a try.

[@dano3345]

Thanks! Would love a follow up video on this after using for a couple months

[@gonzo187th]

great video and information, I am new to this but always have been fascinated with stars and galaxies. I got a new equatorial orion telescope . Finding out more and more information and accessories that I can add to my growing collection of accessories. I do like the red dot finderscope and already got it adjusted with my telescope, but will changing out the base for the dove tail to the dual finderscope so I will have the option to use the red dot & the 9x50mm finderscope or attach the green laser along with one of the finderscopes I have. I will certainly look up the attachment for the smart phone so I can see about setting my telescope like you did. I too have Stellarium and it is great. Thank you again for making the video and sharing your knowledge.

[@AAE-cg1il]

Thank you……I have been thinking about using my phone + astronomy app on my tripod mounted binocular telescope. This vide gives me some hope for it working…….

[@cdavidhord]

This is very intriguing Bogdan-I'm going to try this on my 10 inch F6 Dob. I think this would be great when having neighbors over as they can more easily enjoy the experience by looking at the screen to become oriented, then look at the object. I might try this with Sky Safari Pro since I have already purchased that app. Now to order the parts!

[@ronm6585]

Thanks for sharing.

[@AmatureAstronomer]

I use a similar and less immersive method. I have Stellarium on my lap top on the table next to my rig. I choose an object I would like to see and note the alt/az which is shown on the bottom left of the data which appears when you click on the desired object. I also have Astrohopper on my cell phone, which is Velcroed to my OTA. On the bottom right of the Astrohopper screen is the alt/az the cell phone is pointing. I align the alt/az on my cell phone to that which I found on Stellarium using the telescope. Then when I look though the eyepiece of my telescope, the object appears.

[@scottm599]

Epic solution; thank you!

[@vince953]

Brilliant. I'm looking to buy a dobsonian telescope and might try this.

[@santoshbansode697]

Thanks helpful video this is,,,,,,

[@gwiebus3963]

I printed a phone bracket for all scopes and love it. Works quite well. Tho i must say, i do like the finder scope on my new 6" Dobson 🥰

[@user-mp4dn6oj7z]

How you printed it 😭😭. I try to make homemade one it's a totally failure

[@Krzysztof_Topolewski]

Actually, better app for this kind of job is astrohopper. You do not need to align smartphone but the app itself so adjusting this kind of finder is really simple. Its work better if you have azimuth mount but on EQ mount for now you need to just take smaller jump from star to object

[@yapgideon]

I m using astro Hooper on my 6 DOB everytimes and it did work very well

[@joeshmoe7899]

Celestron starsense technology should turn a cell phone guided telescope into a "push to". I wonder how long before it's a free app.

[@das250250]

Astro hopoer

[@janwouterdeheer7185]

Thanks for the very good information! Can you specify in more detail the products needed to use the telephone as a finder - thanks in advance!

[@BogdanDamian]

@janwouterdeheer7185 Hi! Well first you need am adapter (dovetail shoe/bracket) that is attached to the telescope. It's the same one a finder scope uses. Then you need the dovetail bar that fits in that bracket. Attaching to the dovetail bar is a small ball head like the ones used in tripods. This is used to align the smartphone. To this ball head you then attach the smartphone holder.

[@hakman239]

I found a phone holder and filed the edges to make it fit the dove tail fits need to test now

[@ANg-yz1zl]

Good idea. I didn't know their an app similar to Celestron StarSense guiding. So, now I am 3D printing a vixen mount found on Thingiverse along with some extra DIY parts, and stealing the phone mount on the selfy stick to mount to the 5 inches tabletop reflector Dobsonian. LOL. I hope it works. The app gave 7 days try so fingers crossed.

[@BogdanDamian]

@user-tt6bl2wz6r That's an excellent idea to print the dovetail bar! And with the phone adapter it should work just fine. The only thing you might need is a small tripod ball head to allow you to align the phone with the telescope. Let me know how it turned out. Btw. you could try out this app as well should Stellarium not be the right one for you: play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lavadip.skeye&hl=en&gl=US Sky Safari Pro should work as well :)

[@ANg-yz1zl]

@@BogdanDamian Thank you for sending me the link to the SkEye app. I did test out both the apps Stellarium, and SkEye, also 3d print the phone mount for my telescope, and it works reliably enough along with the part on hand w/o the use of the ball joints. I am still a newbie in this hobby so this is just my opinion. SkEye seems to work better for me because I can just manually align to a know star/planets setup and it can auto-track close enough to be in the zone where the telescope pointed. While Stellarium (pro ver.) has better software, and visuals, the tracking (no manual alignment) is a little lackluster compared to the SkEye, and that 1-time figure 8 or infinity sign calibration was just ridiculous. Both apps are great it just SkEye is free, can track a little better, and so it is a win in my book. Thank you!

[@BogdanDamian]

@user-tt6bl2wz6r I'm glad that the SkEye app works for you 🙂 It's definitely a good app. Clear skies!

[@steev0992]

Hello Bogdan, I purchased all these items and am looking forward to using it. I have a pretty good understanding of how it all works but….. Can you make a video of setting it up and using the Stellarium and mount setup? Thanks

[@BogdanDamian]

@steev0992 Hi! Thanks for the idea. I put it on the list for future videos. Let me know how the setup works for you once you get to test it.

[@steev0992]

@@BogdanDamian Definitely will. all the items are set up on the telescope but, as usual, the weather is not cooperating.

[@samaeru666]

I've seen that the app Skeye doesn't require to aligne the phone to the telescope. More flexible as you can fix it anywhere in the scope, in any position. You then just "aligne" the software, not the hardware

[@BogdanDamian]

@samaeru666 Thanks for sharing! I'll have to try out that app.

[@sgtransit7426]

Skyeye is for android. If you have iPhone, you can use similar PushToCam iOS app.

[@jamesbahn]

I tried to use this method on my 100mm refractor and it was not very worthwhile. The upside is that it's pretty easy to mount your phone to your scope. The downsides are: 1) Stellarium would only stay up for a few minutes on my very current Android phone before failing and I'd have to restart it constantly. I wasted an hour on Stellarium. I had much better luck with SkySafari. Which still stunk because it constantly moves to the wrong compass mode. Have to do two searches for one item. It's too bad because I'm a big fan of Stellarium on Windows. 2) On the refractor, your phone is right in front of your eyepiece, so you're blasted with light whenever you use the eyepiece. Probably not a problem with a dob. 3) You really do have to recalibrate when moving very far. I spent much more time recalibrating than actually using it. 4) Zooming in and out causes you to have to do another search. 5) Std problem with a phone is that if your fingers are larger than a pencil, you wind up spending a lot of time fumbling the entry and reversing to fix the entry. 6) And worst of all, there's not enough accuracy to really be useful. I'm not a very good star-hopper but I'm 5 - 10x faster star hopping than using this phone method. YMMV.

[@jcarra8963]

Can a cell phone holder like the Ruittos Tripod be used on top of the a telescope tube for sky alignment? I noticed that both of my refractors have a protruding screws on one of the clamps that holds the tube.

[@BogdanDamian]

@jcarra8963 It is compatible with the telescope, but you will need a finder shoe adapter to be able to attach it to the telescope.

[@joeshmoe7899]

Plate solving on stellarium when?

[@yapgideon]

Hi bro,I tested to fix my cellphone as a finder scope for my telescope but having difficult to use the stellarium plus.any suggestion how to align on the stellarium app?

[@BogdanDamian]

@yapgideon Hi, its probably a calibration issue with your phone. There is an option inside stellarium to re calibrate the sensors. Try that first. You could also try out a different app to see if the issue persists.

[@DennisK-010]

Hi Bogdan, been trying a similar setup with some succes but the accuracy isnt great.. I wonder, can u plug in a scope camera to you laptop?

[@BogdanDamian]

@denniskuhn8314 Hi! Yes you can! There are telescope cameras out there that connect via USB and are even WiFi enabled, which will let you stream the video to another device.

[@DennisK-010]

​@@BogdanDamian hi Bogdan, yes i know that but i mean could you plug it into stellarium so that you can use the camera (possibly on a finder scope) to aim the (manual) scope? I guess this would have much higher accuracy..

[@BogdanDamian]

@denniskuhn8314 If it would work with Stellarium, I don't know, but there are guiding scopes that are basically a finder scope with a camera inside. Their job is to talk to the computer and help guide the main telescope. As far as I know they require a goto platform for the main telescope. I'm not sure if it would work with a manually controlled telescope.

[@DennisK-010]

@@BogdanDamian thank you for the info.. still a new hoby to me and my component wish list to long still to think about cameras😄 but will try to borrow (or try a cheap usb) one and see if this will work one my finder scope.. ill let you know..

[@MountainFisher]

You know, part of my enjoyment of viewing deep sky objects is the search itself. In my Astronomical Society of Las Cruces club (btw one of the founders was Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer of Pluto) the members have all kinds of go-to electronic telescopes, still some big setups also do not have all that. I saw one astronomy KZbinr say we don't need Planispheres or Sky Atlases with smartphones and the internet. I have manual mounts so I need my Planisphere and Sky Atlas, but I can find what I want in 5 minutes or less of DSOs that you can see without long exposures. On the Joe Jaguar channel he bought the cheapest Celestron Star Sense telescope just to get the Star Sense setup and bracket and he put it on his 12" Dobsonian and after a few modifications was using it as a hand powered Go-To finder. He used it in Toronto Canada city lights and it worked great. Plus he can be a humorous host. kzbin.info/www/bejne/m4nCoIuCr7l4i5o

[@BogdanDamian]

@jimmontg Thanks for your feedback. I usually like manually searching for DSOs as well, but there is something special about knowing exactly at what I'm pointing my telescope at. Especially when I'm in "free roaming" mode and not searching for anything in particular. To know exactly what it is I stumbled upon kinda makes me feel like an explorer 🙂 Also, great idea with the Celestron Star Sense. Should work very well.

[@sgtransit7426]

FinderCam

[@raueugen9047]

Why not showed us how your method is functioning outside in the night !?

[@David-gr8rh]

The only issue here that I see, the phone looks like an iPhone so that's the battery drain problem sorted, right away. The OS of a phone is the largest piece of software and a single application is not. I do this myself with a galaxy note 20 for the star finder, and the note 20 ultra taking the photos in manual Raw mode though my telescope a 10inch. Both phones last 13 hours average. We can only blame our tools

[@RobertHopkinsArt]

Thanks for the video! The free version of that app is atrocious. The adds that pop up with the blaring sounds/music makes the free version unusable for me. Nothing relaxing about that crap. Deleted... I enjoy using the app "Night Sky" better. But, I like your concept!

[@BogdanDamian]

@robertjhopkins5425 Thanks! The Night Sky app is great as well. Go with the one you enjoy using the most!

[@RobertHopkinsArt]

Thanks, Bogdan! My AD10" shows up at the end of this month and I may use your iPhone holder idea. One step at a time!