Raspberry HQ-Cam and our Moon

05.01.2026 - 11:50 pm

During the pandemic, I bought a 6-inch Maksutov reflector because I wanted to revive my hobby Astronomy. I had too much money and could hardly spend anything during the pandemic, half of it was a frustration purchase. That's why you can see a 5-inch refractor in the picture, which I simply bought for little money because of the shorter focal length.

Unfortunately, it hasn't really worked as an anti-frustration so far, I've only been out in the wilderness with it twice since then and a few times it stood on the balcony. But somehow I have the feeling that the desire is just increasing again. The reason could be Jupiter, which has been visible from my balcony in the evening for weeks.

A few days ago I found pictures and videos of our Moon, which I was able to take in the first months after buying the telescope. With a 70 Euro inexpensive Raspberry Pi HQ-Cam, which is used with the telescope by adapter instead of an eyepiece. I took test shots with it and the Maksutov from the living room in May 2021, with the window open.

Two videos of them are halfway presentable and maybe this blog post will soon motivate me to do more. The resolution is only 800 pixels in width, significantly less than the Raspi-Cam can actually do, probably I got confused with the settings.

The first video shows the bad seeing in front of the living room, with swirling craters around the day/night boundary, a few days before full moon.

The second one is a focus experiment, that shows trees in the foreground and later the moon a little further away.

Happy New Year from earthly Cologne,
Martin

90 seconds - 800x480 px - 6,2 MB
25 fps - lib264

60 seconds - 800x480 px - 4,2 MB
25 fps - lib264

Povray rendering, which shows the most prominent craters in the videos.

About