After having the iPhone adapter slip during preparation for Tuesday night's ISS pass, I decided I needed to better secure the phone on the adapter to keep the phone from shifting as the telescope was slewed.  Shifting causes the camera alignment over the eyepiece to be messed up.  Unfortunately, my current adapter design is not a hard mate of the phone to the adapter so some solution needed to be found that would still work within the limitations of what I had available to make the adapter.  As seen in the above photo, I added another wire to better support the wire that holds the iPhone.  This cross-wire helps keep the phone from shifting.  There is still a little play in the position but I think to address that will require a complete redesign.  I may yet to do that and make a better adapter that mates the phone to the eyepiece more securely, but for now, this is what I have.

Opened the observatory Wednesday, 15 September, at 1810 MST, 98°F.  There were a few clouds around.  At 1819 MST, I took quick looks at Venus and the moon at 77X.  Seeing was not very good.  At 1835 MST, viewed the lunar terminator at 133X.  During moments of steady seeing, the views were nice.  At 1840 MST, set up for lunar photography with the iPhone 3GS.  The improved afocal adapter seemed to be much better.  It was much more reliable at obtaining and keeping the optical alignment.  Here’s the moon at 77X:

Here are the craters Aristoteles and Eudoxus at 666X:

Compare the view above to the view 24 hours previously on yesterday’s report.

Seeing was still not very good, so I backed off to 444X and took several iPhone still images along the terminator:

And my favorite from this night, Crater Walther.  Love the central peak shadow.

All of the terminator images had the saturation removed and some image sharpening done during post-processing.

2005 MST, still some clouds around.  2025 MST, over to Jupiter, low in the east and still behind a tree.  Three Galilean Moons were visible.  2047 MST, the fourth Galilean Moon appeared beside the planet.  Jupiter was still low in the east and seeing was lousy; lots of roiling at 206X.  2112 MST, the Great Red Spot (GRS) was just barely visible at the planet’s limb.  2212 MST, seeing a little better.  The view was fair at 267X.  The GRS was nearing the central meridian.  At 2225 MST, I set up for iPhone imaging.

I captured videos of 1, 2, and 4 minutes.  I was hoping to stack the frames from the videos but seeing was too bad for that to be worthwhile.  So, here is a single frame from one of the videos taken at 666X:

The Great Red Spot is visible near the central meridian, south of the equator.  Several cloud bands are also visible.

2300 MST, seeing was still not very good, so decided to close up for the night.  Observatory closed at 2310 MST, 75°F.

Before I end this report, a special CONGRATULATIONS to Wayne and Lorelei Parker, SkyShed, for being named entrepreneur of the year in Canada.  Well done!  And well deserved!!