Paul M

Here is last nights allsky timelapse. North to the left.

The glow at upper left is Penrith. It's light now severely affecting my once dark-sky location. The plane tracks are mostly self evident and most of the other meteorish, single frame, trails are satellite flares. I'll have a closer look, frame by frame later but the ones I've investigated so far look very satelitish. I'm guessing the bright object arcing to the right, going into dawn in ISS.

Anyway, I remember a time when the sky looked like this with just my own eyeballs. I never get bored of this stuff. If you listen closely you can hear the celestial gears whirring...

There was another nice aurora last night.

I been previewing the images from my remote allsky camera in Cumbria. Having a bit of a struggle to download one to my phone just now. But here is a screen grab of a frame at about 01.50. Some detail is evident so I think the timelapse will be nice. The lonely RasPi will churn that out later and I'll post it after I get out of bed after this night shift.

Nicely captured. 

I just checked my remote allsky camera and it also captured a pink glow below Cassiopiea. The timelapse from tonight might show more when it gets generated.

That's a fine image! I look forward to being that rusty, one day...

12 minutes ago, OK Apricot said:

Criticism welcome!

Nothing to criticise as seen by my eyes. Nicely captured and delicately processed. 

I find many of the images that have been sharpened by the latest software tools to be quite jolting, almost unpleasant to look at. 

The first half of last night was very clear again. However, there appears to be a fly in ointment. See if you can spot when the neighbour puts his not-very-bright outside light on when he lets his dog out for its bedtime business. Normally it on and off again but this is the third time since setting up the camera that it's been left on.

It's not the end of the world and I'm not going to even mention it to the neighbour. They, like many of us, have enough going on in their lives without being upset about something else, as they would be, upset that is. It's an old "low energy" compact fluorescent lamp that brightens over a few frames as it warms up. It was still on at 10am. We've left ours on, unintentionally, numerous times. 

I'll just move the camera so that the dome doesn't get direct glare. The illumination of the trees isn't a big problem, just the dome flaring that's killing it. No doubt there'll be more issues like this going forward. 

A very worthwhile outing, I'd say.

It's also good to see wide shots of globs, particularly of fine specimens like M3. And it's come out just fine in the crop.

Nicely Done!

13 minutes ago, John_D said:

Fascinating reading thank you. It's something I've thought about several times but not quite got round to ( the usual story 😁 ) A couple of questions if I may:

1. Do you use any software to detect meteor trails or do you have to manually look through every image?

2. How reliable is the POE at higher currents? Is it better than using say wi-fi and a small local power supply ( apologies if there are design decisions for this in earlier posts that I've missed )

The software I use is Raspberry Pi specific: https://github.com/AllskyTeam/allsky

It's quite comprehensive, very configurable - to the point of taking your life over!  And does have a meteor detection module/plugin that's still experimental. I haven't used it. As you'll see from the full night timelapse below, the camera is sited under a busy flight path of Transatlantic and domestic flights. There are multiple satellite flares there too. So I suspect it might be hard work training software to pick out meteors from all the noise. I could be wrong

The PoE is stable, but as noted above, getting the right gear is important. The current Pi 4 reports the odd "under volt" when it's busy, such as when it's crunching the images to make the timelapse. I've already upgraded the PoE switch that supplies the power and I'm going to replace the splitter for a higher rated one. 

I had some teething problems initially, long period connection drop-outs but not loss of power. It turned out that the Pi was connecting via WiFi, which is a bit flakey in that spot - outside an aluminium caravan! The Pi was set to prioritise WiFi over Ethernet. Now corrected that but still have the WiFi connected as back up. The Pi has crashed to unstable states a couple of times, VNC not connecting so unable to go in and fix it, but did have SSH. A bit complex really. I have a mini PC on site also. That lives inside. I can VNC into that then SSH to the Pi to reboot it. That's mostly just a hazard of remote computers, not particularly PoE, and it's rare. PoE has been better than I'd expected. It's not a very long run and only Cat5 cable, maybe 20mts. I do have all the bits to run power and ethernet separately or even just have the camera on its own via a long USB 3 cable. None of that was needed.

Anyway, last night was very clear oop north.

In a land far, far away, Cumbria to be exact, there is a pristine clear sky.

I'm not there to witness it, but the Paulsky Camera is!

While flicking through the images, I spotted a nice meteor. So here is that frame. It'll be lost as a sub-second flash in the overnight time-lapse.

Cloud and moonlight have been blighting the Allsky Camera recently but it's improving again, maybe a window of opportunity before the all-night-twilight sets in.

The Great Glowing Cheesball is just starting  to affect the camera now. So, it's downhill for the rest of the night...

In other news, emboldened by @Skipper Billy's Allsky camera linked to above, I've ordered a lens that will fit the whole image circle on the ASI 178 sensor. So a full 180deg view. That and I've ordered a much bigger dome. Again, Skipper Billy suggested that on his website as it allows ventilation holes to be drilled around the camera, allowing the very warm air from the RasPi to circulate in the dome, hopefully keeping it condensation free.

There is a newly released firmware (EEPROM) for the Raspi, which allows even greater overclocking. I can't dream of taking the enclosed Pi to the max but I still had the original firmware on my Pi 4B which limited the CPU to 1.5 MHz, I've now set it to 2.0 Mhz. It might, and probably will cook in the summer. So I'll likely stop recording daytime images and just let it idle in the heat of the day. I'm looking to swap the Pi4 for my Pi5 to limit some of the issues with image handling. I tried at the weekend but it balked at boot-up, complaining of voltage drop. Thinking about it, the PoE splitter is only rated at 2A, so I've got a higher rated one on order. The PoE injector is a big 8 channel PoE switch rated at 85w total load. It is also running 2 x PoE surveillance cameras, but I'm confident that total load will be compliant.

That'll be an ongoing project into the summer, due to my limited opportunities to get up there once the parts arrive.

It is indeed a very pleasant image, natural and easy on the eye. And yes, if I hadn't been told different, I'd have taken this as a very well presented M33, from an aesthetic point of view.

I dabble myself but, I aint no imager. I'm an appreciator of fine images and on the subject of NB and Mono, I sometimes find that harshly blended Ha layers can be quite "jerking" on an otherwise fine image. Just sayin'  

Not unlike taking portrait of your favorite niece and highlighting the zits... 😁 

As I often do with other's images, I took the liberty of downloading, solving and investigating this fine image, just to see what's there.

I expected there to be a few Quasars in there, so using ASTAP annotation filtered for QSO's, I got the result below. Rather a lot of them! 🤪 and it looks like you got a few pixels for many/most.

Superb!

1 hour ago, Skipper Billy said:

It can give a full 360 degree image with the right lens - this is the same camera as yours but with a 1.55mm FL lens at F2. 

https://www.davidbanksastro.com/all-sky-camera

That's an excellent build you have there David. I've been thinking about changing the lense but wanted to see how I got on with the kit lens included with ASI178 first. It is quite a crop on the short axis and already annoying me! Getting a true 180deg view would be nice and make it more practical to then record only a square ROI and put the N/S axis in the vertical. 

Thanks for the lens suggestion. I will very likely source one in the near future. 

I'm very interested the focusing solution you have too. Not too worried about auto focus or ASCOM drivers. I could just have a little routine on the Pi to manually drive the focus on demand, rack o'th'eye, though focus seems quite stable as is. 

This Allsky camera is the most fun I've had with gadgets for a long time so it's only right to continue tinkering. I'll probably build a website too... someday

Here is the overnight timelapse. It shows the aurora nicely. As already noted, the red aurora upset the white balance. So that's no longer in auto.

I seem to have a condensation bloom there too. I'm back on site at the weekend so might look at connecting the dew heater. It's been wet oop north so the whole thing might be awash inside the case!

Just a shame that the Great Glowing Cheeseball ruined a nice aurora.

Interestingly, the image colour balance has just been going haywire as I'm watching the Aurora. It's gone green. I suspect the red of the aurora has tipped the auto white balance!

So, as this is a learning curve I just turned auto white balance off and re-booted the PaulSky Pi.

Hopefully not ruined the time-lapse. Actually the white balance losing the plot probably already has done...

Via my remote allsky camera I saw a (still active as at 23:15) aurora:

There is quite an aurora going on right now. Probably drowned out by moonlight for visual observers but might be worth a punt with a camera.:

Tonight's Aurora forecast is better than last night's and the weather is forecast to be clearer. So I'm hoping to get some more late season, Moonlit aurora.

In the cold light of day, I now have the overnight timelapse. It runs dawn to dawn and the PaullSky Pi then FTP's it to another Mini PC ( a cute little N100 from Chineshire) that came with W11 but got retrofitted with Ubuntu (I'm done with headless PC's balking at Microsofts demands). That machine is the server for my other survelance cameras via AgentDVR, I can VNC into both Pi and PC should I need to but Agent drills through the portforwarding and dynamic IP malarky and gives me a lovely screen showing the normal camera's live view, the latest frame from the PaulSky camera and the current dawn to dawn Paulsky Timelapse. Until I find a way to lash it up differently, the MP4 just plays contininuously. I can download the the file to my home PC for editing such as below where I've trimmed the timelaps to show the overnight period only. You'll see the ickle aurora at the 8 o'clock position at around the 23:00 mark. 

Another first for the PaulSky Camera tonight, a short burst of Aurora, either that or the reactor's alight....

The forecast has a broad but not highly intense Auroral Oval oval for the period so it certainly looks like it. Other frames, though not as intense, show more definite rays.

North is to the left. The red at the 8 o'clock moved around and spread over 20 minutes or so and faded.

There are only a few days around New Moon when the Moon isn't visible.

So at new moon its in the same bit of sky as the sun. 

As the moon goes round earth it gets further away from the sun as seen in our sky. At full moon its opposite the sun and ocassionally slips into earth's shadow, giving a lunar eclipse.

So between new and full moon the moon tends to be in the evening sky. After full, it gets increasingly further into the morning sky.

So, yeah, the moon is almost visible every night for some amount of time. But its also visible in the daytime sky almost as frequently. You'll only see a full moon in a daytime sky as it rises and sets.

2 hours ago, happy-kat said:

That's a corker capture and nice focus on your allsky stars

Thanks. It took some time getting there!

I'm playing with the binning at the moment and that shot was in 1x1 so very sharp. The images binned 2x2 (by the camera) are brighter and a bit prettier, particularly in the timelaps, but don't look so good on larger screens. The stars having distinct discs.

1 hour ago, Tomatobro said:

Looking at the exposure time and recording time if yours is GMT then this could be a match as ours is tagged with UTC

https://archive.ukmeteors.co.uk/reports/2024/orbits/202404/20240409/20240409_225146.475_UK/index.html

Yes I think that's the one. Only just realised the PaulSky camera is very unscientifically running on local/BST. So my capture was at 22:51:39 Zulu.

I'll change that, at some point when I get sat comfortably.

 Tonight I got my first meteor. And an impressive meteor too! Im still playing with settings but i don't think I'm far off now.

North is to the left, the bright lights of Penrith bleaching the horizon.

The only thing worse the dire weather is the dire ear I had a few weeks ago...!

Anyway,,,,,😁 I've stopped looking at the forecasts. I've been almost totally absorbed with my Allsky Camera project, Raspberry Pi's, and assorted mini PC's running either Windows or Ubuntu.

As an aside, I just took the SSD out of my underperforming, generic, Chinese mini PC (W10) that has been my imaging PC for a few years, and plugged it in my cutesy and slightly higher spec NUC that I've just relieved from other duties, and with a bit of poking and peeking in the BIOS it booted and runs! OK, it chewed away at itself for a while, but did what it needed to sort itself out. So if there is a clear, settled night, between now and the summer light night recess, I'm ready. And if the W10 NUC with APT et al does spring a cog, I'll fall back on my recently rebuilt EliteDesk Mini PC running Ubuntu and KStars/Ekos et al. What could possibly go wrong?