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The sky is too big. I went out telescoping looking for M13 and there were too many stars and it’s too big and I don’t know where I’m aimed. When you’re so zoomed in, there’s so many stars you don’t know where you are or where to look.
Enter the pifinder! I’m going to make one.
I went to my local makerspace, known for having too many donated bits and bobs they actively try to get rid of (what a wonderful problem to have).
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My telescope is pretty good, but now that I have one I’ve been thinking about how to get even better. Here’s what I’ve been thinking about:
#1: Bigger telescope.
Bigger telescopes with bigger mirrors both capture more light and allow you to resolve tinier details. I saw someone made a “Leavitt” telescope, also 3D printed, designed to fit an 8" mirror! My telescope has a 4.5" mirror right now. It cost $30.
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For the record, past me was wrong. That’s not the ring nebula. There aren’t two bright stars aligned like that near the ring nebula. But that’s the prettiest Jupiter I’ve ever taken!
(Why is there a double saturn? I know why now!)
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Huh. I installed the front truss addon, I’m observing now and finally noticed the direction of the wobble. After a transient big vibration period of 3s or so it settles down… and stars look like two points right next to each other instead of a big glob of light. Progress! I looked at a low-altitude object… And the direction of the two stars was up and down. I think I’ve finally defeated side to side wobble only to find my true opponent was altitude wobble
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Telescope mount v3 is pretty good, but it still wobbles slightly. If I touch or move the telescope, it wobbles a bit before settling down in 2-3 seconds. Before it settles down, Saturn turns into two images of Saturn next to each other.
I can use that picture and do the math to see how much it's wobbling:https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/planets/distance says Saturn is 18.96" right now. That's a second of arc, 1/60 of a minute of arc, which is 1/60 of a degree.
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I drove a few hours to visit friends and a bortle 4 sky. wow there were so many stars. You could barely make out an arc slightly lighter in the sky than the rest of it! The Milky Way! Through a telescope, there were much more stars than before and they just kept going and going if you moved the telescope. Saw the plediades too wow many bright stars near each other
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Jupiter, four Galilean moons, and a blue star!
It could be improved if I was better collimated, but I’m happy I got all 4 of them with the high power eyepiece!
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Today I learned that astronomers measure star brightnesses in the modern AB system, using (logarithmic) units of Janskys, where one Jansky is 10−26 W⋅m−2⋅Hz−1. Why is there the extremely cursed Hz−1? Hz is already s−1. Why is it like that. Astronomers, why is it like that. s−1−1 is just seconds
If you cancel all the units, you get… 1 Jy = 10−26 kg m2 s−3m−2 s−1−1 = 10-26 kg s−2. …so we measure starlight in the same units as surface tension.
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