To the left is the moon, on the right is Venus with the same luminosity if you weren't seeing it through my phone camera. It's probably the brightest I've seen in a year. Taken in Colorado so I don't know how your local orientation will differ.

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[–] happybadger@hexbear.net 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Thanks for the recommendation! I'll definitely look into a RACI. Upgrading it for proper astrophotography with my DSLR would be great. My issue is with the star finder. That model has a super cool feature where it will automatically reposition to view different objects in its database. But in order to do that it needs to have exact coordinates. The few times I've taken it out, I haven't had phone reception to know exactly where I am because I'm just opportunistically doing it while camping. Approximating them just confuses it and it refuses to lock onto things.

[–] conditional_soup@lemm.ee 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Oh, man, astrophotography is an eventual goal of mine, but yikes is it expensive. It's my understanding that these systems usually have some mode where they can be dialed in by two bright stars that you know what they are or Polaris or something like that, no need for coordinates, it just works the math out on its own. Is that not the case for the star sense system? Also, is there any way to drive it with a third party app like Stellarium?

[–] happybadger@hexbear.net 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I tried that mode but the system was being obnoxious about focusing on them. I'll have to try it with Stellarium since I already use that for naked-eye viewing.

[–] conditional_soup@lemm.ee 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Now might be a really great time to try again, there's some really great bright stars in the southern sky right now, what with Orion (Rigel would be optimal but probably any of the belt stars would work) and Canis Major (Sirius, what else?) on the rise.

You've also got Gemini approaching the zenith. Castor and Pollux would probably be ideal for this; remember, Castor casts their leg out.