DeepskyWim

Last year, we started to build our own Analog Sky Magic binoculars.   First step was to order the lenses, mirrors and tools, and to start 3D printing all parts.  As we don't have a 3D printer, we used CraftCloud to do all the printing.  The building process is explained very well in 20 educational and easy to follow movies.   When the 3D parts arrived, I cleaned them on October 2, 2023.  We started building the telescope on October 22.  It is really a fun project to build and Lotte (10 years old) could do most of the steps on her own.  Everything was finished on December 23.  And it was clear enough to have a first look at the moon.   Finished Analog Sky Magic, ready for first light! On December 26, I could observe again a bit.  It was full moon, so I observed the moon, Jupiter (as a small disc, with the four moons) and the Orion nebula (with UHC filter). The binoculars are very easy to collimate.  I have the following set of eyepieces: 36mm Baader Hyperion Aspheric: 6.25x, 11.5

After a long, wet and very windy autumn and start of the winter, we finally had some clear nights on January 9 and 10, 2024.   January 9, 2024 The first night, I mostly tested the eFinder, but I had some problems this time: The software did not seem to recognize the ServoCat.  This was a stupid mistake as I did not use the servocat setting in the configuration file   My settings in SkySafari were not correct, so I could not connect the telescope to SkySafari.   The push button of the eFinder handpad did not work anymore, so I needed to fix this. I tried to use a voice recorder on my phone for the first time to keep track of the notes.  Certainly during this cold night, it was very useful that I didn't need to write everything down. I started to observe at 20:56.  The SQM value at that moment was 19.7.  After playing around with the eFinder, I first looked at Jupiter.  The best magnification I could use tonight was using the 8mm Tele Vue Ethos, giving a magnification of 296x. Three