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Hi Darcy,

Sooo, I'm going to go in a different direction than previous commenters, and well, I'm going to be blunt. Anyone who tells you that smartphone stuff isn't worth your time is likely engaging in the same type of elitism that exists in various parts of astronomy that will tell you:

a. If you use a go-to scope instead of a Dob, and are not manually star-hopping, you're not a "real astronomer";

b. If you don't get an equatorial mount, AP isn't worth it;

c.? If you use anything?less than $5K worth of astronomy gear, you're not a "real astrophotographer";

d. If you don't learn to stack, stretch, and use wavelets, you're not really doing AP.

To be blunt, I don't agree with?hardly any of those opinions as they leave out about?10 questions and variables that may or may not apply to you. Not everyone has the same goals, and lots of successful APers are more than happy with the results they get. If you doubt my veracity, check out this guy's site, Andrew Symes from Stittsville. He also posts his more recent stuff on Twitter, but if you go to the site, you'll see some amazing stuff he's done of planets. All of it with a smartphone and a goto scope. He isn't the biggest, or the best, but the reason I am sending you to his site is because he did it over 5 years ago with an iPhone 6SE. Not the latest and greatest phones with larger sensors, better software, etc. The newer stuff? Even better.

If you want to see more recent stuff, there is a thread on CloudyNights called Smartphone Astronomy and another on FB called the same. If you want to get started somewhere, a webcam might be a good option, but if you already have a phone and an adapter, why not start with the gear you have and see if you enjoy it?

I get those who want that other gear, but almost all of them are farther along in a spectrum where you may or may not end up. For context, in my experience, the various users out there are on a spectrum between observing and imaging:

A. 100% observing, 0% imaging

B. 80% observing, 20% imaging

C. 50% observing, 50% imaging

D. 20% observing, 80% imaging

E. 0% observing, 100% imaging

The reason I am reacting is in part because I am at stage B on that scale, and ever since I've started, I've listened to people who immediately hear "AP" and think there is only one option which is the best option for E with webcams, cooled, GEMs, etc and have actively pushed me with the same advice you already got. Completely and utterly wrong for me, as that isn't the reality for a lot of people, and there are huge learning curves with AP that a lot of people jumping to follow that advice find themselves hopelessly lost, not enjoying the hobby and giving up. Because they listened to someone who was C, D or E who told them there was only one way to do this.

I've attached smartphone, point and shoot, DSLR and webcam to my scope, as well as doing stuff sans scope. I will always be A or B on that spectrum because I have very little interest in really long exposures of the scope doing its thing on its own, and then long periods of time manipulating the data in software. My kick is the observing, all I really want are decent souvenir shots.

Which isn't to say your 80mm is the best option, but it's the option you have, and I would play with it before deciding to invest in extra gear. If you do want to use your smartphone, you should know three things.

1. Stability is an issue. Every ounce of weight you add will increase that instability. If you attach a small bag of sand to hang directly under it, it will lower its centre of gravity which may help. Using a remote BT shutter or a timer will also help for the actual imaging process. The scope and mount you have isn't the best designed for big AP, but it doesn't mean you can't do SOMETHING.

2. You won't be able to do long exposures. With the mount you have, 10s is probably the max useful time for most objects (if using an iPhone) or perhaps 5s with Android phones. That isn't a slam against the Android phones, it's that the Android platform introduces a much wider set of parameters of issues for whichever phone or software you use, some allowing you longer times, some not. But almost all will produce 5s shots without too much distortion. For the iPhone, the recommended software is NightCap for 90% of users and nothing else really comes close. Note that the NC software actually only takes 1s exposures BUT if you set it for say 10s, it will take 10 x 1s and stack them on the phone. So it looks like a 10s exposure. Many Android phones will do the same. If you want to do planets, almost everyone on smartphones is doing video and then processing it through PIPP and Autostakkert. Anything else is challenging to produce anything decent.

3. Your adapter is going to make or break your experience.

You may have already figured that out with what you have. However, you should know that there is a lot of patience required in figuring out your workflow. But it pales, in my view, in comparison with the huge learning curve that goes with autoguiding, web cams, laptops, and everything you need to do to pull the images from a webcam setup too.

For a smartphone adapter, you essentially have four components:

a) How it attaches the adapter to the eyepiece. In almost all cases, you will want to attach it BEFORE you put it in the scope. Anything else just messes you up. Many people actually invert the adapter (i.e. placing the phone in it and then putting the phone down on its face) so that you insert the EP into the adapter and line it up over the camera lens rather than trying to align the camera lens over the EP. You can even look down through the EP from the wrong end and see how it is aligned over the EP. Anything else is beyond frustrating. Some adapters use "pincers", some use "chucks" (like a drill chuck), others use set screws to hold the EP. Personally, I find the "chucks" the best, but they all work generally better on simple plossls and not very well on other types of EPs (fat, wide, 2", etc.) as they like smooth even "tops" to grab on to.

b) I started with the EP, but as indicated, most people start with attaching the phone. Some have three "edges/plates" which are left / right / bottom edging for the phone and often springs to hold it tight against the edge of the phone. Many will not work on the larger phones if the phone is in a phone case. Once in the adapter / attached to the platform, it generally is moved up and down in the Y axis by moving the platform. If you've already centred the EP, you don't have to move it at all.

c) Adjusting the x axis is as easy as the Y axis, once it is in the plate. However I flag it separately as sometimes the x-axis is controlled by a completely different type of adjustment than the y. While the Y might have a little knurled?lever to allow easy movement, some of the X ones are more like set screws. Some of the early and cheap adapters, including for point and shoot cameras, have a little screw pivot that locks x and y at the same time and are INCREDIBLY frustrating if you are not nimble of finger.

d) Last but not least, the z axis. Very few of the adapters on the market will let you easily adjust the height of the phone above the EP. Remembering that you are doing afocal as compared with using a webcam, you do have to make sure you're putting the lens at the right height above the EP to be able to be in focus. As noted above, this is MUCH easier with a plossl than other types of EPs. However, the "Cadillac" of adapters, the Celestron NexYZ has a knurled knob for adjusting the X axis independent of the Y (and independent of how it attaches to the phone platform), AND it adds a separate knob for the Z axis (height) too. It was a game changer but also 4x the average price of other adapters. It is also heavier, and that adds up if you have a big phone to go with it. All of it adds weight to where your EP goes, and can cause it to "tip", almost like you need a counterbalance as on an EQ mount. There are ways to adjust for that, so some people love it.

Some people are using cheap adapters and doing wonderful things, some are using expensive ones and struggling. Most of it comes down to workflow over gear. There are about 7 different types of smartphone adapters out there, and I'm hoping to review them all this year when I get my observatory built soon. Fingers crossed.

If you do want to start with the moon, one of the easiest objects, I recommend you adjust your settings to infinity for distance (almost all AP will be), your ISO as low as it can go (probably around 24), your aperture will be set by the phone and DO NOT use zoom, use a low power plossl to give you lots of space around the image, and reduce your time to about 1/200th of a second. You should be able to snap something with your current setup. Yeah, you can go longer and stack, but any longer for an exposure right now is likely to just blow it out to almost gleaming white. You can go up to about 50 for ISO when it is less than a 1/4 moon, but maybe not even then. The more power you use, the closer you'll get, but it is easier to "nail the workflow" at lower power. Zooming on the phone is an extra step that reduces pixels, doesn't help much, and at a certain point, you'll lose the image as the camera will switch to another lens.

I am far from an expert in all of this for results. But two years ago I did a bunch of stuff with a lousy workflow and I still liked the results. Here is a photo album of a bunch of globular clusters with my iPhone XS Max and Celestron's NexYZ adapter. They are way less impressive than the stuff people share here or APOD or the RASC AP group, nor am I trying to compete with those. But for an "addon" to the gear I already have, I'm pretty happy with it. For an example of a "bad" one, fast forward to the M13 cluster shot, where you'll see I didn't have my camera settings right because the phone was trying to fire its infrared and it was reflecting off the lens. Meanwhile, there's a guy on Amateur Astronomy on FB, named Loren Ball, who has a simple adapter and his iPhone, doing 10s shots with a solid workflow, little editing, and capturing all the asteroids he can find. Not bad for a "smartphone".

Good luck,

Paul