Canon DSLR mounted on a Celestron scope. Homemade solar filter.
They actually weren't too bad, but the celestron mount is VERY vibration-prone. That made for some blur..
Great pictures! Have you tried adding sandbags to the telescope to increase mass/reduce vibration? I've had great success with that when using long lenses.
No... Super long story, but something like this: I've had it for 7 years. I found out last November that the reason it never could track properly or hold position if you even touched it, was because of an improperly assembled bearing on the ALT axis.
Celestron "fixed" it, but only after I provided screenshots of their tech support email chains (6 in total) from the first 4 months I owned it. Funny how their system no longer had any record... but I digress.
Getting them to fix it involved getting the BBB involved, and I think they didn't take kindly to that... the mount, which used to require being balanced to within 3 ounces to prevent drift, is now so tightly assembled I could hang laundry from it. I can hear the motor struggle greatly compared to how smoothly it used to run. "Fixed."
There's a reason they're called a 'hobby killer' of a company.
But anyway... the mount is given a thumbs-down for stability for photorpaphy purposes on multiple sites, so I kinda knew what I was getting in to. I used an older Canon because I had a hacked firmware on it that gave amazing shutter control... I could fire the button (IR to avoid actually touching it) and it would open the shutter, but then would wait a set time (up to 10 seconds) before actually reading the CMOS. It was made specifically to allow time for vibrations to settle. However, this morning I realized I had the OEM firmware back on it (I had loaned it to our daughter several years ago,) and couldn't find a working CompactFlash writer in the house, which is necessary to load the hacked firmware. And unfortunately, my new Canon doesn't have that function either, nor have I found a way to enable it. Dead battery anyway. But my point is, after seeing the inside of their drive unit, the entire weight of the scope is resting on a 3/8" shoulder screw that is slid through a roller bearing with a 5/8" big diameter, and only 1/4" thick.It's going to vibrate pretty much no matter what I do. (Which is fine; I never imagined it would be strong enough to move around the scope AND my camera.. it was always just for tlooing at... little points of light.)
I remember reading your posts about that!
I remember reading a post about shitty celestron customer service months ago, must have been yours.
Your pictures a among the best I've seen of this eclipse. Excellent job for what you had to work with!
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