JamesF

I'm intrigued.  What does your RPi control in your chicken coop? :)

James

1 minute ago, Marvin Jenkins said:

The Moon! I know it is obvious but my first views made me swear out loud. You see it all your life on the way home late from a friend or the pub or what ever.
Not seeing it! But Observing it! Through a scope for the first time it is a game changer to how you see where your feet are planted and on what they stand.

I completely get this.  The first time you see the Moon and have that feeling that you could just reach out and touch it is quite something.

James

What you need is a camera to allow you to check the state of your all-sky camera.

James

Just now, jm_rim said:

Agree - And I thought my kids were close at 6, 4, and 2... 

We realised a while back that a two-year age gap has some disadvantages (in the UK at least).  Assuming this school year goes to plan (and who'd bet on that right now?) we will have both children taking exams at the start of next summer.  It's going to be stressful

James

8 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

I totally agree!  My own kids are 7 6 and 5, so it's a case of get them to bed and go outside  

Yup, mine left me much less time for astronomy at a similar age, but as they've got into the last few years of their school lives my free time has started to increase again.

James

I think you're going to struggle with that little.  You could add more swap as a file on the SD card, but it won't be good for performance.

James

2 minutes ago, AstroRookie said:

Out of memory: Killed process 31870 (kstars)

That's not good.  How much memory does your RPi have?

James

Yes, looking at the code this is an error message that comes up when the file header value that indicates whether the data in the file is big- or little-endian is out of range.  It should either be 0 or 1, so the value you're getting makes it look like something has got corrupted in that file.

James

32 minutes ago, wkarotten said:

Thanks, but then again, how can a satellite or debris reflect light from the sun in the middle of the night - earth is blocking the sun, there is no light to reflect

That depends on the relative positions of the Sun, Earth and the unknown object.  Just because the Earth is between the observer and the Sun does not necessarily mean that it is between the unknown object and the Sun.

James

46 minutes ago, rl said:

Mains is a better option

Indeed so.  I don't tend to use DSLRs for much other than star trails and very wide field images these days, but I have a mains PSU feeding a dummy battery for my 450D.  It's just a world less harassment if you have a suitable supply available.

James

I'm surprised to see that it got down to 0.1C here last night.  Temperatures seem to be dropping very fast all of a sudden.  Winter, as they say, is coming.

And it's a gorgeously clear, bright day today.  I'd deliberately given myself a bit of time off to go out and get a few pre-lockdown errands done, but I might have to see if I can make time for a bit of solar observing too.

James

1 hour ago, DaveS said:

Would have to be Cygnus with its rich MW and all those lovely HII regions. Plus it's my latin namesake.

Cygnus is Latin for Dave?!  Well I never!

James

What make/model newt is this, out of interest?  Needing the eyepiece to be 155mm from the tube seems a bit extreme.  I'm wondering if perhaps it's a newt that's primarily intended for imaging?

And how much more outward focuser travel do you need compared with what you already have?

James

5 minutes ago, Phillyo said:

You wouldn't need to lose sleep if you were running an obsy on your dry arid sunny lands though. Just set it off and go to bed!

Assuming all I wanted to do was astrophotography :)

I'm uncomfortable when it gets too warm though (it's November and I'm still wearing shorts, even working in the veggie plot yesterday) and I just feel more at peace in a leafy green landscape.

James

Having managed to get past the notion of having too many telescopes, I'm proud to say that I scored a grand total of two.  I therefore declare owning mumble-teen telescopes to be perfectly healthy and normal.  In fact, I'm surprised that everyone doesn't do it.

James

I lost him at the start when he started talking about someone who had too many telescopes.

James

7 minutes ago, andrew s said:

Unfortunately,  verdant green implies rain! 

Yes, the irony was not lost on me :)

I wouldn't insist on it being clear every night though.  I'd need to catch up on sleep at some point.

James

19 minutes ago, Whirlwind said:

Unfortunately this isn't really an option in the UK as land is prohibitively expensive in most areas of England (barring random places in Scotland - and countryside houses are booming at the moment due to COVID).  

Part of me would love to sell my countryside house in England and move to somewhere with weather more conducive to regular astronomy.  Not sure I could do southern Spain though.  I do prefer to be surrounded by green and verdant countryside.  I think even Olly might be a bit too far south for my liking.  Can't really happen just yet though...

James

2 hours ago, brown_rb said:

I see you have already soldered J7 headers in place, I would suggest soldering the ds18b20 direct to these header pins

I crimped mine into a 3-pin female header that I then slipped onto the pins to make it easier to replace should it fail.

James

Sadly none of your photos appear to have worked, Paul.

3 hours ago, Paul M said:

Final adjustment of the worm mesh turned out to be hugely more delicate than I'd imagined. The declination axis was straight forward. I just felt for play and very gently nipped it up. I did the same with the RA axis but on powering up and running both axes RA was a mess; stalling and what sounded like belt jump! I fiddled for some time with RA worm mesh. Eccentricity is the issue here. Tight in spots and slack in others.

That's pretty much where I got to.  I need to return to it sharpish, really.  My tight spots all seemed to be in one quarter of the travel of the RA axis though, and I did wonder if I couldn't fiddle things around such that the offending section of the RA worm wheel never actually got used (so it would be in the "counterweights up" position if used, basically).  I got no further at the time, however.

James

13 minutes ago, M40 said:

One of our options is to move down your neck of the woods in the near future.....retirement, daughter and family, Exmoor and Dartmoor dark areas etc etc and we have been looking at the weather and it does seem to be a trifle moist compared to where we currently are; so part of my plans are to build a pier in an enclosure with removable roof so the telescope is always ready and no lugging it all about.

I'm a stone's throw from the edge of Exmoor if I've had my Weetabix and building an observatory has enabled me to get out a fair bit more, though the last couple of months genuinely have been pretty grim.  Spring and early summer was excellent however, so I guess it all balances out in the end.  The major difficulty in the south west at the moment seems to me to be the sheer unpredictability of the weather (which does make an observatory or roll-off shed a real boon).  For example, a couple of weeks back we picked most of our apples to press for juice.  My children are all fired up to help out and we were looking to do it tomorrow, but the forecast has changed so many times in the last three days (it's a sufficiently messy job that it needs doing outdoors) that I still have no idea whether it will be possible or not (it's "not" at the moment, as in the last couple of hours we've been slapped with a "yellow rain" warning).

James

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-54721921

Nice work on the Slovenian church.  Seeing buildings lit up at night like beacons for no real benefit is one of the things that does wind me up.

James

I'm not far from Cardiff as the meteor falls and I have to agree the weather has been pretty appalling over the last few months.  There have been clear nights, but often after wet days when the seeing becomes quite mushy thanks to all the moisture in the air.  Getting on with other things is my usual way of coping, though options are a bit thinner on the ground now the clocks have gone back.  As long as I'm actually being productive somehow I can handle the barren spells.  Tonight I wouldn't have been able to go out anyhow as I have to work, but given a free afternoon I spent it with my daughter, reorganising the polytunnel so we can fit more plants in next year, which means I still feel as though I've achieved something of value to me today.

James

15 minutes ago, merlin100 said:

Can you get one with a black hole in the centre? 🤔🤣

So you can talk out of a place the sun don't shine?

James

I don't appear to have any contact details for Tom I'm afraid.  The only thing I can think of is to try to contact him directly through the website.  I suspect however that it will go to the same place as the signup requests.

James