A Small Telescope That Surprised Me
adfr.io
adfr.io
Maybe I'm being too much of a purist because late model smart telescopes now allow you to grab the raw FITS files so the relative value of a fully open ecosystem is lower, but I'm trying to build towards the motivated teenager segment: someone who maybe has a Seestar or has seen one, and wants to have that experience, but wants to own it themselves and actually understand what's happening. I have the mechanics mostly working in Alt-Az mode, EQ mode is currently accomplished using a hinged plywood board fashioned into the world's shittiest polar alignment wedge, and now I'm working on figuring out how/where to source good enough optics. I have already learned a whack-ton designing the thing, and I hope that in the future the build will be interesting and informative enough for others to get a bunch of experience in Astrophotography for very little money.
You can buy the sensors used in a lot of these telescopes for <50USD on Aliexpress, the drive mechanics and electronics are ~80, and then all you should need (hopefully) is a cheapo Raspberry Pi 3 or equivalent, putting the total BOM at under 200 bucks. I'm hoping that by early next year I'll have something presentable and we can start building an open source ecosystem to compete with these very impressive but very heavily integrated instruments.
Even a BOM would be helpful. Also understanding the post-processing/cleanup step would be interesting.
Maybe good sensors suddenly became cheaper? Willingness to put a real computer in the control system? For a long time even potato quality CCDs were expensive and handset electronics have been awful.
There is https://observatorycontrolsystem.github.io/ on the scheduler side
Currently the state of software development for these smart scopes are...not good. I even wrote about the issues years ago when I "jailbroke" my Seestar S50[1]. With a proper open source solution + better quality gates, it's finally turning into something usable for us power users. I'll give ZWO credit for one thing though, at least they themselves finally admitted defeat and added native Alpaca support in the end.
If you do release your open source Seestar alternative, let me know and I'll write a HAL driver for it.
1: https://www.cloudynights.com/forums/topic/900861-seestar-s50...
How does one communicate with the device? Is it over the network or it's a device with a driver (and a C library?).
Fundamentally this seems like a very fancy gimbal+camera - of which there are opensource variants (like the reCamera from Seedstudio). I guess the cmaera stuff has standard interfaced (V4L), but I don't know about gimbals
I have both an S30 Pro and an 8” motorized SCT. The wow factor of a real scope is not lost, I can assure you.
But I don’t take my big telescope camping, for example. It’s too big and awkward. The Seestar fits in a backpack, and spits out beautiful galaxy photos to use as phone wallpapers. I just leave it running all evening. It’s very neat.
The astrophotography/live viewing split in astronomy is interesting. For me, the whole reason I do backyard astronomy is to find the objects myself and observe directly, to the point where even using an app like Stellarium feels a bit like cheating.
Personally, I have no computers, phones or any electronic crap when I'm observing the sky. Just me and a manual telescope.
I look at the sky to get away from all that shite.
Lets just say there is no need for a compass!
Seriously?
You mean that _really_ bright star that is out of place on your constellation map / planisphere?
It's a planet.
Look at it and see which one it is. (BTW: Look at it a few nights later as it moves to work out its trajectory. Congratulations, you can now identify which planet it is anytime, no telescope needed.)
Also, don't planets sometimes seem to move in non-intuitive paths, like Mars performing retrograde motion when viewed from Earth? If you were viewing the plants constantly, then sure, you could pick it out, but if you left a gap between observations, wouldn't it be a lot harder?
First thing to know is what there is even to look at. If you don't know anything, look here:
https://www.heavens-above.com/skychart2.aspx
You'll get a better result if you put in your actual location, but whatever. Looks like Saturn is visible this time of year, and will be in the east around midnight. You can check this right now and it'll be about right for the next few weeks. You can step the time forward and see what how the planets move over time.
If you don't do the above steps, you could probably make a guess, as the planets are the brightest objects in the sky, easily seen by eye.
Then you point your telescope at it. I found mine in the trash and it didn't come with the spotting scope, so I kind of just have to guess where to point it. Use your widest angle lens, and move the scope around until you see something bright go by. You're close! Then you center the bright thing in the center of the view, and after the scope stops shaking because it's on a cheap tripod, you can see a very tiny Saturn, including the rings. Then you swap the lens for a more zoomed in one to see it better. The rotation of the earth means it will quickly drift out of view, so you have to constantly adjust your scope every minute or so to keep it in frame, until I fix the motor that came with my equatorial mount which is supposed to do this part for you.
I mean (based on peer replies) it does come off as a funny question, but I guess if you're young enough it is a totally legitimate question! Never thought of it that way.
But yes, you have a star chart, or atlas. The North Star locates your north and everything else you can then reference from your chart.
(I'm not familiar with southern hemisphere viewing)
And after a little while you recognize the major constellations by sight, so you can orient yourself vs. the chart even if you don't see the North Star for example.
Planets are different since their relative position changes all the time, so a static chart can't tell you where they are. But there are really only four planets you can see with eyes (Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn) so you learn to recognize them pretty quickly.
I find it extraordinary that you assume a young person is incapable of understanding the concept of a map!
I am guessing on age though, mainly because for anyone who grep up when charts was the only thing that existed, this wouldn't be a question.
Why not just download HD scans from the pros especially if you're going to "automate" the hobby portion of the field.
Can I just simulate the user interface a smart telescope uses and then just return Hubble photos after some artificial loading screen completes? Maybe toss in some whirring noises?
But, why is anything worth doing? For most hobbies the fun is the doing not the result.
Why do woodworking when I can get a better quality piece for less in the store? Why fix my car when I could drop it off at the shop? Why travel anywhere when I can just get the same tourist trap photos from instagram?
That was the right thing to do!
But removing the solar filter right at the moment of totality is such an edge case (both for the software and my wetware which was kind of overwhelmed) that I wonder how others dealt with it?
I'm also wondering about the feasibility of taking these gizmos on airplanes, what with the Lithium battery packs, etc.
What we really need (for some definition of need) is a robot-filter-remover, timed to deal with the two critical times (first and last instant of totality; 2nd and 3rd contacts from memory). Anybody out there interested in building something like that? It would be purely a passion project, because it could only be used a few times a decade...
Not sure how a robot filter remover would work on the DWARF 3 that is reliable and works around loss of alignment and the exposure adjustment. I would love to find a solution for next year. Also wonder how can one test it out beforehand. I don’t want to burn the sensor ha ha
Also, I just found this (total hack, but cool)! [1]
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYJwgEwxG-U
If you want to get into astronomy, he has a few good beginner advice videos:
* 101 books/binoculars/telescopes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IlmekWsEAQ
* some more books: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhbAEx2le7o
> Gradient correction. Noise reduction. Separating stars and nebula. Stretching the faint structures carefully. Working on contrast and colour. Putting everything back together.
A small piece of feedback: it is a really interesting article, but also quite grating to read. I'm guessing you used AI to review/edit, and it seems to have added a lot of filler and coated the piece with its own writing style.
I found a pre-AI post much more pleasant to read: https://adfr.io/thoughts/20240207_time_travel
So I have to ask - am I getting a more "genuine" viewing experiencing? Are stacking and perhaps AI enhancements reflecting the real night sky? Or is SeeStar/iPhone/Pixel output drifting more towards generative art?
There are some night-vision eyepieces which boost contrast and lightness - really cool but also pretty expansive.
> am I getting a more "genuine" viewing experiencing? That's a nearly philosophical question and the answer is yes and no. You will be able to see object you normally would not and the image you get is correct in the way that colors for example represent certain gases, so they are not fake, but also not realistic in the way of how you would see it with your naked eye.
With an 8 inch dob, things like globular clusters are going to look granular and pretty amazing in reasonably dark skies. Similar for bright nebula.
But, yes, it's a philosophical question.
With photos you can have a longer exposure and see things too faint for the naked eye, not just too small. I'd guess that's what's happening here. You could very probably blow this smart cam out of the water with pictures taken through your telescope. Especially if you can have it track whatever you're shooting to allow very long exposures
Take the Orion Nebula as an example. Visually I can't see anything there. But even a short (~30 second) exposure in a single frame (no stacking, or darks, or any fancy technique) brings on a stunning image.
https://www.cloudynights.com/forums/topic/1000995-miniature-...
Well, I bought a used 8 inch (203mm) telescope for 500€ a few years ago. Used telescopes can be very cheap.
Which is fine if you want to make it yourself as part of the hobby. But if your only purpose is to save money...
Saying all that to expand on how the wide field or not is an important decision. If you primarily think of a telescope giving detailed magnified views of the moon or similar, then you will not be happy with a wide field regardless of how powerful of an eyepiece you use.
On a side note, I have an 8'' dobsonian and people think I might be getting magnified views of DSOs with that by default. I have to explain about eyepieces to them to clear that out.
They are out of stock unfortunately, though perhaps the pro is worth the higher price.
As such, you cannot be sure if the writing contains correct and accurate information at all, even with modern models.
how is that related to LLMs?
Neither are a guarantee.
I won't waste my time on a person who didn't bother to express themselves.
Not to say anything negative about the author though, im sure this took a long time to put together whether it was written with ai or not. But I definitely noticed those ai-isms
The subject interests me so I'm beginning to read, only to waste minutes of my precious life on realising this is another long-winded slop. How should I avoid that?
Any better advice?
Idk, to me this feels like I'd be so removed from the entire process that it doesn't feel like it is my image anymore.
Somewhat poor analogy, but these smart telescopes feel similar to bringing in CNC center for someone enjoying woodworking. Sure, it might be very efficient in manufacturing the end result and it is kinda neat that there are cheap options from china available. But it also removes the whole enjoyment of the craft, working with hand tools and what not.