The pier construction project for my 5 inch refractor is nearing completion. Today, I bolted the oak capping, the mild steel levelling plate and my NEQ6 Pro equatorial mount to the top of the reinforced concrete column. All in all I think the project will have cost me about £120 for materials but I did have some of the stuff I needed already in my shed. The weather, true to form, has suddenly turned grim - grey clouds horizon to horizon. I guess this is my fault.
Everything seems to have
Since first posting details of my new set up on the Blogstronomy blog I've been literally inundated by an e mail from a Mrs Trellis of North Wales. Mrs Trellis writes
"Dear so-called Top Gear. When are we going to get that lovely Ginger person back on Gardeners' Question Time? P.S. Show us some pictures of your new mount, scope and camera."
Who am I to disappoint my fan base?
Yesterday I was bitten by kernel update (to 4.10.5) on my main computer (I use Fedora 25). The boot process would at some point just stop, with nothing suspicious in the last visible boot messages; the machine was responsive, though, and Ctrl-Alt-Del reboot was possible. Booting using the previous kernel was fine. After reviewing the boot log (where -1 means second-to-last boot, -0 would be the last (successful) boot etc.):
journalctl -k -b -1
it turned out there was a problem uploading f
Following an inheritance, I've taken the decision to carry out a major upgrade of the set up in my observatory.
Gone is my venerable Meade 8" LX200 and in has come a Skywatcher EQ8 mount carrying a 2nd hand C9.25 and my 80ED and my 66mm ED simultaneously. This is all held together using around 40,000 tonnes of ADM Losmandy dovetails and clamps. Added to this is an Atik 460EX Mono CCD camera + a ZWO 8 position filter wheel with a full set of Baader RGB and narrowband filters and I am one
Another short clear window in the early evening let me practise set up and alignment of the new AVX mount again. I ran through my new alignment process, including calibrating the StarSense to the OTA. I then repeated the process and the handset reported a final PA accuracy of 30" in Dec and 3' in RA. However, (and with clouds rapidly moving over) I managed to take another sequence of 30, 60, 90, 120 and 180 second shots to test tracking. Here's the 180s (which is heavily affected by high clouds)
The forecast was spot on for a change. Clear all afternoon into the evening, clouding over later. So it was worth a good run at fixing the issues I had with my first attempt at polar aligning the new AVX mount and maybe, finally, getting some subs.
I've noticed a few extra things this time:
the tripod is much lighter than the Evolution one. They share the same legs so it's just down to the mounting plate and the accessory tray being much smaller. It's a one hand job rather than two fo
The weather started to promise some clear spells throughout the day with increasing areas of blue sky visible. The forecast suggested the clouds would thin at lower levels with some high haze until late evening when a new band of clouds would move over. So I took the chance and decided to do a full set up and trial run at aligning the new Celestron AVX. Having already set it up once, though without connecting any of the electronics, I decided to work from my memorised check list.
Moving all
Unboxing
The mount arrives in one double-boxed package. Inside were five boxes of various sizes, designed to fill the full space. This did mean that two of the boxes were significantly over sized for their contents, but these were protected with padding. There are good unboxing videos already available such as the one below so I did not take photographs.
There are two large boxes, for the tripod (including eyepiece tray) and the mount (including hand controller in a neat litt
Although this has been posted elsewhere I think it might be useful to show how my imaging has (hopefully) improved as I gained experience/equipment.
A Year of DSO Imaging with an Alt/Az
Well, I seem to have attempted my first DSO images in December 15 and January 16 so it's been just over a year of trying to image with the Alt/Az mount. My first DSO target was M42 which I've shared previously but my next target was the Rosette Nebula which I don't think I've shared. I tho
After over a year of owning and using a Celestron Evolution mount, initially with the 9.25" SCT for visual and planetary imaging, but more recently with a Skywatcher Esprit 80 for DSO imaging, I finally took the step of ordering a Celestron Advanced VX mount, taking advantage of the ridiculous sale price at @FLO.
I'd always been hesitant to move to an EQ mount even though I knew it's advantages for imaging. Just the thought of all that extra set up gave me a cold sweat. I loved the ease of
Well I've made a start on constructing my permanent backyard telescope pier by drilling the 6mm. mild steel laser cut 200mm. dia. disc to take the three levelling threaded studs and the 12mm. bolt for fixing my pillar extension tube to the plate. My investment in new drill bits and cutting oil turned out well, particularly as I have no pillar drill and had to accomplish the task using my trusty handheld Black and Decker.
I am trying to minimise the costs involved by using as many bits and
Cold clear night tonight, finally got to see a few planets as a first. Northern lights around 9 pm and Mars and Uranus came through pretty clear but the cold got to me after about a hour observing. Came out after 11 pm to watch Jupiter rise from the east. Stayed for another hour before fingers dropped off. I'm still learning the sky and how to use my equipment but overall I had a good night. Hot chocolate then bed lol
i have been waiting for tonight all week, clear skies predicted and virtually no moon, slept all day so i could stay up all night, only to wake to cloud and clearskies changed from green to orange, and red for the rest of the week
and my pentax adapter just arrived too. sigh...
Chris’s Backyard Astronomy. January 2017.
A view beyond Earth’s lifetime
Happy New Year to everyone. This month I am going to concentrate upon one topic only; something that came to my attention at New Year. The item in question is described as a QUASAR and makes a year in my life appear extremely insignificant.
Eyewitness report:
“Almost Older Than Time. Would we be able to see it?
On Monday the 2nd of Janua
got my first ever 'close up' glimpse of Orion Nebula this morning considering the moon was streaming down and the local car park had both sodium and halogen floods blasting into the sky, and Orion was skimming the horizon, i didnt think i'd see anything more than Orion's belt, but the nebula was there, a hazy white patch in the sky... Wasnt 100% sure at first, but after ruining my vision checking my atlas, yep all the stars matched, spent an hour and a half gradually freezing solid in the hope
Neoprene, along with 2 x 48W heat cables for the primary mirror and main tube body, and 2 x ~8w heaters for the secondary mirror and eyepieces; 12V PWM controlled (mains power for now, battery later)
NB: this is a prototype design based on reading other peoples ideas, no idea if or how well it will work for avoiding fogging
Waiting for heater components to arrive, for now just the neoprene...
Beautiful clear skies over London tonight, first test drive of my new scope is done; amazing view of the moon, large mountainous craters on the edge which i've never seen before, can actually tell that the moon isnt a perfect disc at all; very happy
Going to try and spot M42 soon, its nice and clear to the naked eye, fingers crossed...
However... while i can already see the potential of the mirrors, the eye pieces are absolute rubbish, significant color shifts on the edges of everythin
Newbie deep sky enthusiast with a new Skywatcher 200P
(sorry dob mob, didnt have the patience for unboxing shots)
Here it is... feel like it should have a name?
Was fairly easy to put together, although the spanners didnt fit the nut that holds the base, and the screw driver only properly fit the screws for the EP holder; thats pretty bad imo, and makes me wonder what else they may have skimped on... but given its one of the UK's favourite scopes, i'm hoping nothing to serious
From the beginning of the human race, to nearly only 400 years ago, everything we knew about space would be observed from the naked eye. Then Galileo came up with his telescope, and the world awakened. We learned Saturn had rings. Jupiter had moons. Within just a few years of that, our entire understanding of the Universe changed. In the next few centuries, telescopes became more complex, of different sizes, lengths, and powers. Hubble is up in space, the ultimate viewing spot. Unhindered by we
So I've recently purchased this little gem. It is so good! Surprisingly showing me Venus and Mars in great detail.
The scope boasts a 4" aperture with a 400mm focal length(quite short tbh) but gets the job done with messier objects.
it has this beautiful red finish which I shouldn't include as a feature but it sure does look gorgeous. Unfortunately it has only seen the sky once
due to the bad weather here but the views were worth it.
My EQ-2 mount is nearing the end of its useful life. It has suffered a screw shear on the Dec. Slo-Mo controls, and now the handle of the main mount bolt has disintegrated. Although I would like to repair the mount, and keep it in operation, unfortunately, it is getting left behind in my astrophotography journey, and a replacement was due within a year or two. The recent disasters have only highlighted the need for this, and so a replacement is on its way! More next week....
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Recently I’ve dusted off my old ray tracing code, done some OpenGL reading/refreshing, and implemented real-time ray (and path) tracing on GPU. It turns out the present-day GLSL (OpenGL shading language) is capable enough, and even an integrated Intel graphics has acceptable performance.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lAmO1Ghtn0
The most important part is the ability to use the hierarchical scene graph (tree); thanks to this, ray tracing’s time complexity is only
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