Gina

Been out to observatory, disconnected the cables, opened roof and taken ASC down. Now indoors awaiting testing and fault-finding.

Turns out it needs more than a bit of tweaking - it's gone wrong so it's fault-finding tomorrow

Collecting data from earlier - from page 17 :- The circuits for the dew heater and Peltier TEC camera cooler. The same arrangement of components is used for both, but heater is controlled by GPIO12 and the Peltier TEC by GPIO13. To run the cooling from a different voltage during daytime I shall have to add extra circuitry. Probably using P channel power MOSFETs rather than N channel but I'll have to think about it. I shall also have to run a test to see how much cooling is wanted during daytime. Hopefully I can use the +5v supply. One control line should suffice - just switching between daytime and nighttime with long exposures (low and high cooling).

Power off and all safe. So it's fault finding tomorrow!! Groan!!

"Huston - we have a problem"... Something is wrong. Firstly the camera stopped capturing so I reset everything and now having comms problems "broken pipe" error from Terminal. I'll go out and switch off the power and look at it tomorrow.

This seems to be a plethora of vapour trails! The sun has set behind the trees here but still shining on the far hill to the east.

Increased exposure to 1ms. Camera temperature -0.2°C.

Here's the latest image converted from FITS to PNG.

I've scanned this blog and preceding threads right back to the Mark 3 which used the Arduino rather than RPi and not found the setup info ? It must be somewhere else! Anyway, I'm leaving the ASC running overnight and will probably work on it tomorrow.

On reading through this blog I see that several things have changed since starting it. It is also a hotchpotch of various constructions and two different astro cameras and with little structure. It therefore seems to me that I should start a new blog with just the construction details of this all sky camera (which I think should be called the Mk 8). Another reason for starting a new blog is that this blog is a follow on from previous blogs and threads of earlier ASC versions and finding any actual information is well nigh impossible. I found this when I tried to find how to change the WiFi settings. That information is in one of the blogs/threads but no way of knowing which without a great deal of reading. I propose to write a new blog with details of the current incarnation of my ASC with all the setting up information. This may enable anyone else to make a copy if they wished. That is the purpose of blogs - to spread information. I don't believe I have accomplished this effectively. It will also act as a reference work in case I need to alter anything.

UPDATE :- While the ASC is basically working with good nighttime cooling there are several things that want improving. Mounting wants doing properly Driver that controls the cooling and dew heater doesn't seem to be working Camera cooling could do with two levels of cooling (full cooling not wanted in daytime) Needs WiFi setting up to reduce cables Power cable needs arranging so that roof can be opened with any chance of cable catching on anything

A lot more wispy cloud gathering now so there may not be much doing tonight though the cloud could go away again, of course.

The ASC will need a bit of tweaking so not quite finished.

Me too - works fine.

I don't plan to put fish in the pond but there was a frog in it the other day. Only saw it when I disturbed the bottom of the pond. Can't really do much to the garden ATM as the ground is like concrete with cracks an inch wide. We need rain and not just half an hour of drizzle! The turf I laid round the wildlife pond has mostly died in spite of watering. The flowers are surviving though. I shall be moving them to planters or raised beds when I can manage it. I have some planters now containing lumps of hard, solid soil and some water, hoping it will soften up enough for planting.

Some photos of the ASC mounted on the roof. The fixing is temporary and will be tidied up and improved. I just wanted it up there to check out.

Some wispy high level cloud and some lower. The things in the field next door near the bottom of the frame are cattle. This lens gives more than 180° FOV - I think it's quoted as 185°. Anyway, it goes below horizontal which I think is remarkable.

In the heat of the mid-day sun the camera temperature is -3.7°C. I bet the "cooler" is pretty hot!! Might go out and check.

Rather stringy cumulus clouds constantly coming over the sky. Camera temperature now around -10°C. Weather forecast predicts more cloud by midday.

A cloud slightly dimming the sun.

Cropped screenshot from KStars FITS Viewer showing some clouds coming over now.

Now the sun is up and an almost cloudless sky, I'm capturing an image every 10s with an exposure of 32µs and gain at 0. Camera temperature of -12°C. Could do with less cooling during the day but it needs some as with the camera thermally insulated it would get hot otherwise. I think the only disadvantage of having full cooling is that it uses an unnecessary 20W of electricity. It isn't causing any sensor cover glass icing or even misting though when I started 32µs exposures after the camera was off for a couple of hours and the temperature reached -20°C there was some misting round the edge. I'll give this some thought but I want to get on with other projects.

Image from 02:30 this morning. Certainly not astronomically dark! The Milky Way is visible though much better on a really dark night. No processing has been applied to these images other than conversion from TIFF to PNG to post here, in PixInsight.

Set up Ekos - KStars to take 250 60s exposures which should capture images until just before sunrise. Camera temperature around -8°C. A final image for tonight...

Taking 60s exposures now and camera temperature seems steady at around 10.5°C. Gain still at 96.