JamesF

Let's hope the rendezvous with the orbiter goes well.

James

Blimey.  Fifteen years.  Mind you, it's quite shocking that I'm not far off ten myself.  I don't know where the time goes...

James

1 hour ago, gtis said:

James thanks I will not be upgrading to big sur as my MacBook Pro is too old 

Neil 

Mine is the oldest on the "supported" list, but given the reports of bricking older machines after upgrading I'm being cautious for the moment.

James

Horrible to watch :(

James

2 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

You are using it on newtonian scope so other spikes are just regular newtonian spikes two of them being aligned with two spikes from B mask and hence hidden while other two being visible for total of 8 spikes?

Ingenious :)

Easily tested too, I guess, by rotating the mask, say, 45 degrees.

James

Just to confirm: I've tested a FireWire camera (DMK41) on MacOS (Catalina -- daren't upgrade to Big Sur yet) with the upcoming v1.8.0 and it appears to work fine.

James

51 minutes ago, Grumpy Martian said:

Elon Musk says SpaceX will go to Mars in two years, then humans in four .Is this a serious possibility?

A story from The Independent.

|https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/elon-musk-spacex-mars-date-starship-b1764979.html?amp

I don't believe it at all.  Even less so if you're concerned about getting the humans back again.

I read that Mars launch windows occur about every 26 months, so the next one would be around October 2022.  To send a robotic mission then might seem feasible for SpaceX, but I'd have thought they'd already have to have things well under way already if that were the case.  Bearing in mind that a few missions have failed to land on Mars and survive, the idea that after one robotic mission they'll be able to send a human crew in December 2024 with all the fuel and food etc. that they'd need for a nine-ish month trip there, plus presumably something similar on the way back, plus whatever time they need to wait before they can actually start the journey back, and that they'll be able to put together a crew who won't kill each other after spending so much time with no other company seems quite fanciful.  And I bet there are all sorts of other issues that have yet to be solved too, particularly ones that don't even come up if you don't have a squidgy crew on board.

I'd have thought that doing a few unmanned and then manned missions to the Moon first would be sensible, to test out the technology and do a lot of crew training, if nothing else.  And that ought to be happening already if the idea is to leave for Mars in four years' time.  Perhaps should already have been happening ten years ago.

James

1 hour ago, Macavity said:

Whenever I hear Nigel (a sometime friend!) I still think...
"making plans for..."

You are not alone :D

James

6 minutes ago, Captain Magenta said:

It's not. It's just a very big spacecraft.

Of course!  I have no idea why that didn't occur to me earlier.

James

There's (what I assume to be) another shot at the top of this page:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-55160768

I have to admit that I'd not realised the Moon was quite so small.

James

It certainly is

James

I'm not certain because I don't do Windows, but can't ASTAP use an external astrometry.net plate solver, which can then use local copies of the star catalogues and do plate solving on the machine itself?

James

On 30/11/2020 at 08:29, Geoff Barnes said:

I had a couple of small refractors when I were a kid but alas no Box Brownie photos of them. Fast forward to May 2018 and my pride and joy the Skywatcher 12 inch Dobsonian.

May is autumn Downunder, hence the lawn covered in leaves...

 

Don't look now, but Bill Oddie has stolen your telescope!

James

3 minutes ago, Spongey said:

a scope that can provide a corrected image circle that large!

I have a vague recollection that a few years back Olly suggested, perhaps in a discussion relating to the Atik 11000, that there are almost no OTAs that achieve this.

James

A great shame, but not surprising I think.  When it was announced that it wasn't safe to attempt a repair a short while back they said that it could collapse at any moment.

James

Oh, let's call the whole thing off...

James

I believe that should work then.  I've not actually tested that specific camera in years (I can't even recall where mine is for the moment), but I do have another FireWire one on my desk to test with before I make the next release, so if I've broken support for it at some point, it will get fixed very shortly :)

James

1 hour ago, fozzybear said:

forgot about the pesky little blue thingy with a crosshead to adjust the brightness (pot)

Always a good one for catching you out, that :)

James

51 minutes ago, gtis said:

Hi James sorry for butting in I am new to Apple MacBook Pro will a iSight webcam work with oacapture

Is that the internal version, or the external Firewire one?

James

15 hours ago, rofus said:

Is there a way to keep the camera at rest for real during the 60 seconds delay I've set in Autorun?

Not at the moment, but I'll add it to my list of things to think on for the future.

James

johninderby will approve of that last one :D   Looks like there's some nasty sag in the focuser though.

James

There's iMovie on MacOS that's freely available too, though I've never used it myself.

James

It's just gone midday here, and it's so dark because of the cloud that we need the house lights on!  I struggle to find the enthusiasm to go outside and do stuff in such circumstances :(

James

5 minutes ago, Matt61 said:

I've just looked and realise that the focusser differs between our telescopes .Yours being more basic. One site recommends putting some ptfe tape( the white plumbers tape available cheaply in any diy store) If when adjusting your focus it all feels a bit loose and imprecise a couple of turns of tape around the screw thread could help in making fine adjustments. 

I'm fairly sure I've read people recommending that here, too.

James

Have you tried checking the "Limit" box and setting it to one frame?  That's the first thing that occurs to me.

James