Paul M

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?

I've read some emotional tributes online, but this says it all. 

As above, theses are beautifully presented observations.

A joy to peruse. I'm no double star observer but enjoy reading the excitement of the hunt.

landed on wrong thread!

Stars! Lots of stars!

Got some tweaking to do. But need more dark sky. It seems my rushed mounting of the camera today had me get it 90 deg of the orientation I'd intended. I wanted the North/South line along the long axis (ASI178 doesn't get the whole image circle). It'll be next week before I can turn it. Software tweaks are via RealVNC, so doable anytime.

I'm having trouble with my RasPi 5 which also lives remotely. It was acting as a server for my other general surveillance IP cameras and was going to be serving the images from the Allsky Pi. Unfortunately, I can't get RealVNC running on a Pi5 running Ubuntu (known issue) so installed Bookworm (Ras Pi native language) but, and thrice but, Agent DVR doesn't run in Bookworm (known issue). So I've left it with Bookworm and RealVNC so I might trouble shoot that remotely, though it's unlikely. People more competent than me have thrown the towel in. RealVNC are working on a fix for Ubuntu/Wayland but it's flawed and flakey just now.

Not to worry, I've got a couple of N100 mini PC winging their way to me. One of those will do the server job up there nicely! Windows, I hate that it just works...

I was only just power watching some of his recent videos last week. He'd been less productive on YouTube since moving the Turkey and he'd slipped off my radar. 

I saw Dylan O'Donnell's youtube message earlier and was blown away   

His knowledge and experience will continue to inspire for years to come.

Here is a timelapse from dawn yesterday to dawn today. It was just sat on a shed awaiting proper mounting. Some real stars in this one.

Now, I know anyone arriving in this hobby since last June may might not have seen any stars yet. So this will particularly exciting for them... the best 134 seconds of their life.

Today, before heading back home, I fixed it to a corner of the Luxury Cumbroan Villa to give it a whole sky view

The wayward cable will be rerouted if this location works. But there are some tall and overhanging trees just over your right shoulder as you look at this. Maybe a bummer.

17 minutes ago, WolfieGlos said:

no image that I've seen from this thing is "astounding". In fact, most of them are of a quality that I would deem "needs more subs" and would never be shared anywhere.

That's where I am. I've spent £thousands to get there!!

I still share'em though!

For years I've wanted an allsky camera. Late last year I started putting a plan together and bought some bits.

I used my existing Raspberry Pi 4 and ASI 178MC camera with the included 2.5mm lens.

I chose the prefabricated case from dewcontrol.com, along with the 2.9" acrylic dome and heater element. The case blurb says it will house a Raspberry Pi, but at the time my Pi was out of town so I took their word for it. The Pi does ft, but not with any leads connected.

Plan A was to run it via PoE, but no room for a Pi and PoE splitter in the box, let alone the SSD I also wanted to use.

Plan B was to house only the camera in the enclosure, and run a long USB vable and 12v heater supply back indoors. My intended siting for the camera eventually precluded those ideas.

Plan C was to go back to PoE but replace the case. That's where I ended up. With the SSD, and Pi cooking away, I'm not expecting to need the heater element. It's there ready and waiting, just needs connecting.

It's been a mash up, with some of my worst brain work, ever. Unfortunately it's been one of the worst years of my life. With the loss of the mother-in-law in mid-February, that wasn't foreseen as recently as December. I've picked and poked at this project as an attempted distraction. 

Anyway, after the enforced layoff, we're finally back at our Luxury Cumbrian Villa, where the camera is intended to be sited. Even the simple job of connecting the PoE injector proved difficult today. It's been on soak test at home for a week or so. But got it up here, routed a cable made off the RJ45 plugs, and nothing worked. I brought it back inside to test on a proper supply and all was well. I remade the connectors (eyes aren't what they used to be) just in case. Still no good. Then I noticed that I'd plugged the Ethernet cables into the wrong in/out sides of the injector. A great way to burn off a spare hour or so!

The case still needs siting, it's just sat outside after finally getting the dome bonded and weather proof. A bit more soak testing while I work out how to get it past the MB! 🤣

Anyway, here it is, the first published image from the world's first "Paulsky" camera. Looks familiar? 

With imagination, you can seen the Milky-way arching across the image, the stars!! Just look at those stars...

Perhaps smart scopes will come of age when they produce images, from the app, that are at least superficially as good as those from whatever the current AP trend is at the time.

When  you consider that the great leaps now are from camera sensor technology and software/AI advances, that time might not be so far off.

The leap, in my view, will be with the first self-polar-aligning, equatorial smart telecopes. I Think that is only a few short years away. 

And it can't come soon enough! 🤣

12 hours ago, robin_astro said:

Do you have a reference for that?

It lurks in the depths of my decaying grey matter   I first read that, without getting further references, a long time ago. Perhaps from "Asimovs Guide to Science". The only metric I remember is that at one time an Earth day was only 18 hours long. That is probably the primordial Earth?

Your Quora reference was a surprise to me, but more current and reliable than my 45+ year old memory of the subject! I am now inclined to re-visit the this. I'd have thought that tidal friction would be precicley known nowadays and calculated without use of fossil records. But then again, continental drift and sea level change will make it a non-linear change over such a large timescale.

Leave it with me....