The balcony, as a temporary(?) home observatory

I am a lazy man, so I automate, leave in place, pre-program — and stuff like that. For Jupiter and Saturn, I made my rather humble balcony into a humble observatory, before the real estate developers (this is a politically correct name for what they really are) fuck up my horizon.

Since accurate polar alignment is not feasible when one can just accidentally kick the mount, just that tiny little bit, and I don’t intend to do deep sky from here, the whole thing is aligned by smell and then guided by the soapbox.

cooling for the night

those clouds should go

the Moon

Saturn

not exactly La Silla

the targeting laser with a buck circuit, powered from 5V (phone charger)

the target is lost…

the micromotor with the reductor and indicator LEDs is doing the fine focusing

powered from 5V via a PWM, the focusing control unit – manual control

muck ficrosoft, really

On Jupiter

on Saturn