For this week's giveaway, we've teamed up with iCandiApps to give two MacRumors readers a chance to win one of the company's first hardware products - the Night Sky MiniScope.

The Night Sky MiniScope is a telescope that connects to your iPhone and works in conjunction with the Night Sky app to help you gaze at and capture images of celestial bodies like stars and planets. It has offers 50x optical zoom and 500x digital optical zoom when paired with the app.

miniscope
Priced at $349, the MiniScope comes with a telescope, a tripod, and an iPhone case to connect the device to your phone. It's compatible with the iPhone 4, 4s, 5, 5c, 5s, 6, and 6 Plus.

miniscopefeatures

Night Sky MiniScope is easy to use, lightweight, small, sturdy, powerful and sublime. Everything you need is supplied in a handcrafted luxurious box. Night Sky MiniScope works seamlessly with the Night Sky stargazing apps.

Locate a celestial object with the Night Sky app and get the perfect image with Night Sky MiniScope.

The Night Sky MiniScope not a tiny device, but it's small enough that it's able to be carried in a bag or backpack to be taken on trips and star-viewing excursions. It can capture some impressive photos of the moon and stars.

mooniminiscope

Moon photo captured with the Night Sky MiniScope

To enter to win one of two Night Sky MiniScopes, use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter your email address. Your email address will not be given to any third party and is used solely for contact purposes. You can earn additional entries by subscribing to our weekly newsletter, subscribing to our YouTube channel, following us on Twitter, or visiting the MacRumors Facebook page. Due to the complexities of international laws regarding giveaways, only U.S. residents who are 18 years of age or older are eligible to enter.

This contest will run from today (July 17) at 1:00 p.m. Pacific Time through 1:00 p.m. Pacific Time on July 24. The winner will be chosen randomly on July 24 and will be contacted by email. The winner has 48 hours to respond and provide a shipping address or a new winner will be chosen.

Top Rated Comments

joelisfar Avatar
127 months ago
If anyone has some experience with astrophotography I'd love to know how this measures up to other options on the market…
My father-in-law makes telescopes and I always try taking photos through the eyepiece with my iPhone. Here’s one of the best ones I've taken:

Score: 13 Votes (Like | Disagree)
japanime Avatar
127 months ago
My father-in-law makes telescopes and I always try taking photos through the eyepiece with my iPhone. Here’s one of the best ones I've taken
Stellar photo!

I do the same with my Meade ETX-90 and iPhone. Here's a photo I took of a recent lunar eclipse.



I simply hold the phone up to the telescope's eyepiece when taking photos. Getting the camera lens to properly align with the image coming out of the eyepiece has been a bit troublesome, though. Lots of trial and error. How have you managed to pull it off? Are you using some sort of camera mount?
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
joelisfar Avatar
127 months ago
I simply hold the phone up to the telescope's eyepiece when taking photos. Getting the camera lens to properly align with the image coming out of the eyepiece has been a bit troublesome, though. Lots of trial and error. How have you managed to pull it off? Are you using some sort of camera mount?
Great shot of the eclipse! Cool what we can do with phones (and scopes) these days!

I've been taking the same approach, lots of trial and error here too. I would love to find a good way to mount the phone to the scope so I could just worry about pointing the scope and not trying to hold the camera at just the right spot. But until I find such a thing I'll stick with the casual approach… burst mode is pretty helpful because I usually only hold it in the right spot for a split second.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
C DM Avatar
127 months ago
My father-in-law makes telescopes and I always try taking photos through the eyepiece with my iPhone. Here’s one of the best ones I've taken:

Trying out a new telescope I got the idea to do the same thing using my iPhone. Didn't spend as much time on it and it was rather hard to catch it to begin with. Ended up with this:

Attachment Image
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Henriok Avatar
127 months ago
This is my shot of the Moon, with a HookUpz to regular binoculars, using Camera+ for exposure settings.

Attachment Image
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
jclo Avatar
127 months ago
The site has some images taken with it:

http://www.icandiapps.com/icandiapps/gallery/

If anyone has some experience with astrophotography I'd love to know how this measures up to other options on the market and what you think of the images. I'm planning to follow this giveaway up with a review, but this is the first telescope I've used.

Edit: Here are some photos I took using it, if anyone wants to know how they come out. http://imgur.com/a/8gHrM
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Popular Stories

iOS 19 Mock WWDC25 Feature

iOS 19 Expected to Run on These iPhones

Monday March 31, 2025 5:28 pm PDT by
iOS 19 will not be available on the iPhone XR, iPhone XS, or the iPhone XS Max, according a private account on social media site X that has accurately provided information on device compatibility in the past. The iPhone XR, iPhone XS, and iPhone XS Max all have an A12 Bionic chip, so it looks like iOS 19 will discontinue support for that chip. All other iPhones that run iOS 18 are expected...
watchOS 11 Thumb 2 1

Apple Releases watchOS 11.4 With Sleep Alarm Update

Tuesday April 1, 2025 10:34 am PDT by
Apple today released watchOS 11.4, the fourth major update to the operating system that runs on the Apple Watch. watchOS 11.4 is compatible with the Apple Watch Series 6 and later, all Apple Watch Ultra models, and the Apple Watch SE 2. watchOS 11.4 can be downloaded on a connected iPhone by opening up the Apple Watch app and going to General > Software Update. To install the new software,...
AirPods Pro Firmware Feature

Apple Releases New Firmware for AirPods Pro 2 and AirPods 4

Monday March 31, 2025 11:27 am PDT by
Apple today released new firmware updates for all AirPods 4 and AirPods Pro 2 models. The new firmware is version 7E93, up from the 7B21 firmware that was installed on the AirPods Pro 2 and the 7B20 firmware available on the AirPods 4 and AirPods 4 with ANC. It is not immediately clear what new features or changes are included in the new firmware, but we'll update this article should we find ...
maxresdefault

Apple Releases iOS 18.4 With Priority Notifications, Ambient Music, New Emoji and More

Monday March 31, 2025 10:03 am PDT by
Apple today released iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4, the fourth major updates to the iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 operating system updates that came out last year. iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 come two months after Apple released iOS 18.3 and iPadOS 18.3. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. The new software can be downloaded on eligible iPhones and iPads over-the-air by going to...
iPhone 17 Pro 34ths Perspective

iPhone 17 Pro Launching Later This Year With These 10 New Features

Sunday March 23, 2025 10:00 am PDT by
While the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are not expected to launch until September, there are already plenty of rumors about the devices. Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models as of March 2025: Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an aluminum frame, whereas the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models have a titanium frame, and the iPhone ...
Apple Card iPhone 16 Pro Feature

Visa and American Express Vying to Win Apple Card Deal in 'Fierce' Fight

Tuesday April 1, 2025 1:50 pm PDT by
Visa wants to pay Apple approximately $100 million to be the new payment network for the Apple Card, reports The Wall Street Journal. As of right now, the Apple Card is on the Mastercard payment network, but that is set to change because Apple is ending its partnership with Goldman Sachs. Both American Express and Visa are vying to replace Mastercard as Apple's card services provider, while...
iOS 18

Apple Seeds First Beta of iOS 18.5 to Developers

Wednesday April 2, 2025 10:11 am PDT by
Apple today seeded the first betas of upcoming iOS 18.5 and iPadOS 18.5 updates to developers for testing purposes, with the software coming just two days after Apple released iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4. iOS 18.5 and iPadOS 18.5 can be downloaded from the Settings app on a compatible device by going to General > Software Update. We don't yet know what Apple is introducing in the iOS 18.5...