Only two days after the full moon, I got this photograph with my iPhone 14Pro and 12″ telescope tonight. Read below to see how…

I attended an interesting Star Gazing event with Star Gazers of Hawaii, which is a local small business owned by a private citizen (Nick Bradley) with a telescope. Twice a month Nick takes to the rooftop of the International Marketplace in Waikiki and shows guests the stars and the moon through his portable 12″ telescope. During the hour+ presentation, he also gives an educational talk about astronomy, and answers all questions in a very understandable manner.

The telescope he brings to these events is a 12″ reflecting telescope that is easily broken down and weighs only 60 pounds (center). At one point in his talk, he allowed his guests to look down the center (lower-right), where we saw the reflector at the bottom, a small redirecting mirror at the top… and nothing else. No electronics at all. Nick knows his way around the sky so well that he could switch from one constellation to another celestial body in a matter of a few seconds, all by his own skill and with no electronic aids. Even in the heart of Honolulu, you can clearly see the stars and planets from the rooftops. Our first target of the night was Saturn and its rings, and the last was the moon, with several interesting stars in between.

There were roughly 20 people in the group tonight, including one family with two small children (upper-right), one of whom got very excited to see his first view of Saturn and its rings!

At the end of the session, Nick sat by the eyepiece and let us each pass him our phones, for him to take the image of the moon in the opening image above.