About

Hi — I'm Noah. The guy behind nrStellar. 

I'm a senior astronautical engineering student who likes to take on too many obsessive projects at a time. nrStellar is one such project, and it's the inevitable intersection of my two hobbies: astrophotography and 3D printing. 

The products I sell are mostly designs I made for myself because I couldn't find any existing solutions I was happy with. In early 2024, I started with the Rokinon/Samyang ring system because I wanted geared autofocus, a third ring to support my astronomy camera, and a modular design. After somewhere between 100 and 200 test prints, a dozen or so free kits sent out to friends for testing, and several revisions (who knew that the Canon and the Nikon Rokinon 135 have a slightly different body shape??), I ended up with a system that actually worked — solid enough to trust while I sleep in my car at a darksite, flexible enough to not be annoying, and polished enough that other people started asking if they could get one too. 

I didn’t set out to start a business; I just wanted to spend too much time overengineering solutions to my problems so I could feel like I was being productive when in reality I was procrastinating on my other responsibilities. But once people started using the rings and sending feedback, it made sense to keep refining the design and offer it more broadly. I still print every part myself, assemble kits by hand, and tweak things when someone finds an edge case I hadn’t thought of. Turning my 3D printing and astrophotography hobbies into this small business allows me to justify continuing to neglect my other responsibilities and obsess over putting together highly polished astrophotography gear with excellent customer service.

I hope you will like my products. If you do — great! Tell your friends. If you don't, let me know. 

- Noah
(My Astrobin profile)