Serious question, I thought that $25 clip-on lens for my phone was total junk until I tried it on Jupiter last month

Sage Young · 2026-09-24T20:20:02.716501+00:00

I grabbed one of those cheap clip-on telephoto lenses off Amazon back in March, mostly as a joke, because I figured a $25 piece of glass in front of a phone camera would be useless for anything in the sky. Then last month I pointed it at Jupiter from my driveway in Omaha and I could actually see the two main cloud belts and three of the Galilean moons, which blew my mind. The trick was holding the phone really steady on a $15 tripod and using a 3 second delay so my hand shake didn't blur everything. It's not Hubble, obviously, but for the price I was wrong about it being a paperweight. Has anyone else messed with these clip-on lenses for planets, or am I just getting lucky with mine?

HW Forums

Loading…

Serious question, I thought that $25 clip-on lens for my phone was total junk until I tried it on Jupiter last month | Astronomy Photos - HW Forums