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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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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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Everything was very blurry today and I kept wondering why focusing didn’t seem to fix it before realizing it was cloudy.
My custom Pico Bluetooth picture taking button worked great though!
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I got the Andromeda galaxy!!!
Aiming the telescope was a nightmare. “I’ll use a star app to aim!” I thought. I tried downloading Stellarium, it complained about a Google Play error. I downloaded SkEye, and it had some weird gyro issues because it expected the phone to be pointing in the same direction as the telescope, but I use my phone camera to take pics so it was mounted sideways looking at the telescope’s eyepiece.
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I finally finished Hill Mount v3, so I put it to the test. I got the clearest phone-cam Saturn I’ve ever seen! Wobbles still exist if you touch the telescope, but the wobbles are much smaller now and go away if I wait a few seconds or use a short exposure time.
Before the wobbles settle down, if you take a picture with a big exposure time, the wobbles cause the image to have two Saturns.
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I took my new wooden-dowel telescope mount for a spin, and got pictures of Jupiter and Saturn with my high-power eyepiece!
I took many pictures, and a few videos. I also figured out how to control the shutter speed on my phone’s camera, and got many photos at 1/40s shutter speed. Using a smaller shutter speed takes the planets from blinding white blurs to circular colored blurs, I assume because it lets in less light.
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Update: I’ve learned about the existence of EMT conduit, which is steel so it’s much stiffer, cuttable with a handsaw, and most importantly way cheaper than the aluminum tubes I bought before!
The downside is it’s sized in nominal diameter, which means lying. The size “1/2 in” has an outer diameter of 0.706 in. But I’ve faced nominal diameter before and this time I’m prepared. Let’s try this.
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I woke up early and saw Jupiter and Saturn!
Thoughts on the observing: I have two eyepieces, a high power 6mm and a low power 25mm. I couldn’t get a picture of the planets with my high power lens because my mount is too wobbly and I couldn’t find the planets once I mounted my phone on the telescope. I did see Jupiter through it amidst the wobbling, and it looked like a featureless white blob.
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With all those upgrades, I was able to mount my phone to my telescope. Recently, the moon finally reached the right phase for it to be visible, so I got great shots of the moon!
With my 6mm high power lens, the moon was super duper detailed. And I realized something amazing: the moon was moving. I was so zoomed in I could see the rotation of the earth! That’s incredible!
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