• he/him

i try to make the world more interesting


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hill.pictures/

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.
I think that confirms my theory that the long stretched out Saturn I saw with Mount V2 was caused by a tiny wobble. Overall, it's not wobble-free and could use some damping, but I declare Mount v3 a success!

I also got Jupiter again, and I could see two Galilean moons by eye but I couldn't capture any using camera. I couldn't see any of the stripes, though. Jupiter is way more featureless than I expected; I wonder if there are any cheap filters I can use to see more of the stripes.

In the last picture, I took a very long 4s exposure of Saturn. The earth's rotation meant, Saturn blurred into a streak, but take a close look - there's a smaller streak right next to it following Saturn! I think that's one of its moons, possibly Titan! It's so cool that I can see it from my backyard.

Things to improve:

  • Make the mount even stiffer?
  • How do I add damping, to make vibrations decay over time?
  • Just as I was writing this, I discovered some smudges on my eyepiece. Oops! Maybe that's adding some glare. Hopefully once I clean that I can get even sharper images!
  • Try image stacking?

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