glyderman

Have decided this was definately a straight on meteor so topic can be closed.

sorry I wrote 10th October in the text it should have been 8th October.

Hi All, I use Thomas Jacquin's Allsky software along with a Raspberrypi HQ camera doing 20 second exposures overnight all on a raspberrypi V3b. I live in south east of the UK near south coast. This about a observation I made the other night and I would like to know if anyone else recorded it. I had my allsky cam running for the Draconids meteor shower on 10th October. I caught a few trails across the sky, and a couple were very long and vivid. Very pleasing to get a few good shots finally after using my allsky for 2 years now, when weather permits. I don't rely on the Allsky software to do the star startails and video of the night, I find I have better results with the program 'Startrails'. I always do a star trails image first then do a 3 frame per second video to watch after. When the star trails had completed I notice one very bright 'star' was stationary in the star trail image. I had never had a hot pixel in that area before. so I watched the nights video carefully to see what it was. At precisely 21:39:12 on 8th October there was a flare pinpint of light that was brighter than any other star in the sky. My first thought was dying star, my second thought was don't be stupid, they can last for centuries, not just a few seconds. So all i could think of was a metor heading directly toward the cmaera as it entered the atmosphere, so it did not leave a trail for me to see. Then this morning I heard on the new about the star explosion GRB 221009A recorded on the 9th October and it has made me wonder. From the reports I have read, it was recorded on the Sagitta constellation. The flash I recorded was roughly in the direction of Camelopardals. It was in only 1 frame so it lasts less than 20 seconds. I positioned the camera in same place I alway do and have never seen any artifact like that occur before from any nearby light so I believe it was a flash in the sky not relfection or anything on the dome. I really don't believe I could be lucky enough to capture a dying star, I really believe it was just a meteor coming in a trajectory straight at the camera, although the odds of that happening must be huge. Does anyone else know about this flash of light or have they recorded it? I have attached a star trails for that night with annotaion of the flare, Ignore red light around the garden i was me just checking my telescope earlier using my red head light. I had actually left the garden my 9pm so the recorded flash was not anything from me reflecting on the dome. I also attached a 9 second video clip shoing the flash at 21.39.12. The date/time is in top left hand corner. I hope I am not making a fool of myself with this post, but it was so unusual to see that type of very bright pinpoint of light flash, I have been using my allsky for 2 years and never seen it happen before. Your thoughts are welcome. sky flash 21.39.12.avi

Thanks for the lnk Laurence. I went for another #497 on there the other day and just received it yesterday. Replaced the faulty LCD screen with mine from #494. The whole HBX was actualy dead, but after some troubeshooting found a faulty power conenction on the HBX part on the handbox. So quick tweak of the conenctors and it all lit up. Now have upgraded it to latest Starpatch. Everything seems to work except it doesn't have an OTA that is close to mine on the data base. The #494 did. I am using a skywatch 100P on it. My other scope, a skywatcher 130PDS is to heavy for it. I will be using the autostar as a grab and go scope. Now I have to find out how to add more meade telescopes onto the #497 data base so that one will be close to mine. Also have to find a supplier of a drop in screen to put in my #494 so that I can attempt to get it working again and unfrozen.

I have now checked the continuity on the handbox lead from end to end and all is ok. Dismantled the mount base and checked continuity throught he hbx port still ok. Every thing else looks ok inside, no loose leads or connections. So my next thing is to buy another handbox and I will use the oppotunity to upgrade to a #497. Bit of a risk as I do not know if the fault is in the handset or the motor circuit board.

I hope someone can suggest a solution to this problem. I bought an old ds2000 mount and autostar 494 recently. I have used it about 10 times with no problems. I had callibrated it and intialised it and trained the drives. Last night during a 2 star allignment the mount just kept turning round and not stopping. I saw an error mesage "Proc Trap 2". I had to turn off the controller to stop the mount moving as nothing was responding on the handbox. I then turned it back on and the usual copyright screen came up then initialising and then the word "Time" with a small vertical line right at end of the display. At this point none of the keys work on the handset except the motor slew arrows. After restarting several times it always froze on the "Time" screen. I turned off the power, I use an external battery, removed the internal clock battery and left it for 15 minutes. Put battery back in and same problem on powerup. same thing. I removed the internal clock battery and started power to unit. This time it went through the copyright then initiallisation and went to "Date". It responded to the enter key and showed incorrect date. I corrected it then pressed enter and it went to "Time". I pressed enter and corrected the time with the arrow keys. Then pressed enter to accept and nothing happened again. I tried all keys nothing would work only the motor slew keys. I replaced the internal clock battery. Now turning off the power and rebooting it just starts with "Time" again and is frozen as before with no keys working only slew keys. Suggestions to solve this please. I am afraid that there may be corruption to the program perhaps. Also would the error be on the mount's circuit board or in the handbox circuit board? I do not want to buy another handbox if the error is caused by the circuit board in the mount base. Regards glyderman