Gina

Been raining all day, some of it heavy but the silica gel is still orange. So far so good... There is work to tidy up the parts of the project inside the observatory but that will wait for better weather.

Useful point from Skipper Billy - one arc second is a tangerine at 3 miles. But since tangerines vary in size maybe a tennis ball at 3 miles - roughly. This can be in a part that describes the relative sizes of objects in arc - degrees, minutes and seconds of arc. And something not actually in my list - guiding, which comes under pointing the telescope.

Here is a list of sections I'm thinking of including. The order may change and I've probably forgotten something. Introduction Photography Terms The problem of earth rotation Types of telescope/lenses Types of mounting - tripods, piers Types of mounts - pointing the telescope/lens at the object Observatories Objects to capture - moon, planets, galaxies, nebulae, star clusters, sun (white and Ha/K) Types of astro camera Filters - LRGB and narrow band - false colour (HST pallet) Image processing My main problem is not knowing how long each section will take. Some could be quite short - I don't want to overload my audience with too much detail - this is a general audience, many with no technical knowledge. Probably a lot of people take photographs but I doubt many know how a camera works. I'm looking at an overall time of between and hour and an hour and a half. I'm thinking on concentrating on the sort of astrophotography I do myself which is mainly DSO, with nebulae uppermost. I think to cover the whole subject would take a lot longer than 1½ hours.

This is what steady rain looks like on the dome <smirk> Exposure 60s, gain 200, camera temperature -21.6°C with cooler on full, dew heater on.

I don't think so. I've been using USB3 astro cameras with the USB2 RPi for a few years now. In fact, it's all working now. It's a strange one.

I am running KStars locally and saving the images to SSD on the Mint desktop. Wired connection has made no difference. Don't know what jumbo frames are. It was all working fine until this morning. AFAIK nothing has changed except the weather maybe.

RPi3B running Ubuntu Mate and INDI drivers. KStars and Ekos on Mint desktop as client. I do have another RPi3B.

I'm wondering if I'm ever going to get this ASC working properly. Actually, I've been wondering that for some time - how many more hurdles are there?!?! This downloading images problem has only recently cropped up. It was working fine until today (or was it yesterday?).

Connected via Ethernet but no better. Very strange.

Downloaded one image but no more despite being set to capture up to 100 images.

Stopped working again but started again after reboot of RPi and two reboots of the Mint desktop. Seems to be "iffy". Wonder if it might be due to using WiFi. I have a CAT6 Ethernet feed to the observatory that I can use.

It's working again! Just stopped and restarted INDI from KStars/Ekos in Mint and it's working. Nice drop of rain we're having!!! NOT! Don't you just love computers?????????????????????????????

It's been working with this Mint desktop with KStars/Ekos and the same RPi running Ubuntu Mate 16.04 and INDI. It's done it before and rebooting both machines cured it but just done that again and it hasn't this time.

Having a problem with the camera again. It connects, reports it's temperature, appears to take an image but won't download it. Just sits there with the widget rotating.

Here's a screenshot of the KStars FITS Viewer. Exposure 200µs, gain 0, camera temperature 5°C with cooling on low (5v).

Camera is working again - hooray I'll turn on the dew heater.

I have this horrible feeling that somehow water has got into the camera again. I can't imagine how as the camera is double sealed. The camera casing is sealed and the outer casing is sealed plus the outer casing silica gel says it's dry. Had a nice break this morning when I joined four other ladies for an art session. The barn owl I painted in the last few sessions was admired and I've now started painting a group of three bright pink spotted toadstools. I seem to be doing better at watercolour painting than astro kit. That may be telling me something!

Silica gel is still orange but I can't get the camera to work. Guess I'll have to take the rig down and bring it indoors again and see what's what - when the rain stops.

Thankfully the sealing seems to be fine - heavy rain and the silica gel is still orange ?

Lovely

Gain reduced from 300 to 150 everything else the same. Been outside and there's no sign of any stars to the naked eye.

General thin cloud!

Yes. Assuming it's still working. I just need a break in the clouds so that I can see the stars clearly.

Exposure 60s, gain 300, temperature -20.5°C.

Light is now off but almost complete cloud cover though some of it quite thin and stars are showing through.