u/Limeniks

Taken with insta360 one rs 1-inch

Insta360 one rs 1-inch 360

Full 360 photo -

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1DNVRtkcrY/

Captured in Pogarić, right next to the Monument of the Revolution of the People of Moslavina — one of the most surreal places in Croatia for night sky photography.Shot with an Insta360 One RS 1‑Inch 360 Edition in Starlapse mode.

The sky opened perfectly: Milky Way core, Perseid meteors, and a whole line of astrophotographers in front of me with their gear pointed at the sky.The monument is visible in the frame — that brutalist concrete silhouette under the stars gives the whole scene a sci‑fi vibe.This is why I love 360 starlapses:

you get the entire sky, the monument, the people, the atmosphere — everything in one shot.

This 15‑second starlapse was shot in my backyard in Piljenice, Croatia.

The wooden sculpture you see in the frame is where I spent countless quiet nights watching the sky. One night, under these star trails, the idea hit me — if I already have a sky like this above my garden, why not build my own observatory?

That moment became the beginning of Bastion, a DIY mini‑observatory project I’m building right here in the same spot.

A small astropark in my own yard, born from a simple thought under the stars.

First steps with my OpenAstroTracker build, based on the OpenAstroTech community project.

This unit is fully 3D‑printed in PETG, designed to carry a Carl Zeiss Jena 180mm f/2.8 lens for astrophotography.

The tracker uses stepper motors taken from a Creality CR‑10S Pro V2, including the original power supply and the aluminum extrusion profiles from the same printer.

The control board is an MKS Gen L 2.1, flashed with the appropriate firmware so it works seamlessly with the OpenAstroTracker software.

This video shows the initial setup, basic movement tests, and the first functional steps of the system.

More updates will follow as I continue refining the mechanics, tuning the tracking accuracy, and integrating it into my 3D‑printed observatory project.

If you want to see the full observatory build (BASTION), here’s the original post:

👉 https://www.reddit.com/r/telescopes/s/2m9Bsi3Iaq

I’m working on a small personal observatory project that I call Bastion. I live in a tiny village with around 300 people and almost no light pollution. After 23:00 the street lights turn off completely, so the sky here is really dark and perfect for this kind of thing.

The observatory is built around an OpenAstroTracker. I’m using the official community design, I’m not the creator of the model. The tracker is fully assembled and running. The stepper motors, aluminum parts and even the power supply all came from an old Creality 3D printer I had. The same power supply now feeds an MKS 2.1 board and a Raspberry Pi 4 that handles control and tracking. Firmware is set up and everything works smoothly.

The dome is the part I’m most excited about. It’s basically a helmet shaped shell made from sixty PETG segments that I printed on my Bambu A1. The visor isn’t finished yet, but it will be printed separately and mounted on the front. I didn’t design the helmet model either, but I’m combining it with the observatory idea to create something a bit unusual and fun.

The whole thing will sit on a 160 cm concrete pillar inside a small 1.5 by 1.5 meter hut that I’m building next to my garden. The plan is to turn this area into a small nature corner and maybe a tiny camp in the future.

I’m trying to make the dome long lasting, so the PETG parts are coated with Hammerite for UV and weather protection. The structure is modular so I can replace individual pieces over the years. The environment here is quiet, dark and surrounded by trees, so it’s a nice place to work on something like this.

Still a work in progress, but it’s finally starting to look like a real observatory. More updates soon.