skybadger

I think that wise.

The ir temp should remain constant. The sensor is internally compensated for temperature so regardless of enclosure temp should read a consistent and steady reading.

Very odd. I have two of these sensors and they don't do that. Coldest is -30 or so. Also, I don't understand why the delta is useful. The sky temp is the sky temp regardless of local ambient. It can be clear at 5 degrees if the wind is from the south and cloudy at -5 if the wind is from the north.

I don't think Ive ever seen a centred flat on all my collimated scopes. it probably indicates a small degree of camera droop and sensor misalignment in the camera. They are only positioned according to the PCB fasteners. The donuts are out of focus dust shadows showing umbra and penumbra if they are small and a penumbra only for further away ones. The size is determined by the focal ratio and the distance.

I've said this before, but sinking drain pipes into the garden to the clay layer, filling with concrete and a mortar bolt gives you a removable and very steady base to put a tripod pier on. You can pull the drainpipe out later if you can pull harder than the water suction of the soil. I happen to have a pier on abs that I used like this for a long time. Rock steady!

If you are building the go-to yourself, Onstep will get you started fastest, from commercial parts. There's a large wiki for it on the interweb.

As another data point I use : ankher usb3 10 port hub on the mount. power to the hub controlled by the pier 8way remote switch, no power means the hub and attached devices is off. usb 3 cable to observatory pc Ethernet over powerline from house to observatory plus a WiFi extender in the obbo for all my alpaca WiFi devices. In general this has been very reliable. Powerline sometimes drops but not often. Hub itself, very reliable. HTh

So the outcome of this is that someone has written an article that in general astronomers who know wouldn't agree with and it's been syndicated across retail websites, using the tools and practices of retail websites ? That's not a scam or particularly offensive. I suggest the action to take is to write a friendly email to the author to improve the content or to write a piece yourself and get it syndicated. There's clearly a demand.. Otherwise this is just on par with slightly misleading television advertising.

Edmund optics sell the holographic transmission grating as an a4 sheet. That's exactly how I started doing spectroscopy before the star analyser came along. Somewhere I also have a thin wedge prism which was to be used to redirect the output spectrum back onto the optical axis. Never quite got around to mounting it. It's purpose was to solve the issue of only part of the spectrum ever being in focus at a time.

Me too but I also had 3 non- pointless. It's funny how you recall star names in detail after the time you need them .

I use the latest betas, they typically include feature requests I find useful, like the ability to use comet 2LEs to cause PhD to track properly on stars while imaging the comet.

I don't understand the reticence with ascom here, it's been very stable for a long time. Updates typically add features, like Alpaca since V6. It's good to hear that you had a simple job of getting ascom to talk alpaca to the indi bridge. I've invested a lot of time and effort into writing embedded alpaca devices and it's good to hear that they will also work with astroberry equivalents.

Does sgp support the ascom observing conditions interface ? That would be my route.

Clear the pillar and replace with steel column ? I can't see any guarantee of bonding to a new pour here but I guess high rise builders do that all the time too. My 12" diameter pier is 6' long and sits on a square plate bolted to the foundation block by resin fixed inserts.

You get to fewer number of bands by being closer to the point of focus, ie defocus only a little bit either side, you get more lines crowding in the further away you are from focus. At focus you've got zero lines and you're essentially taking a Foucault-gram. In taking a picture of a star I'd be looking for the airy rings to check they are centred, you can have the illuminated secondary centred in the beam but the primary and secondary reflections still be out.

Can you take a set of ronchi images that are three or 5 bands only, both inside, at and outside focus. The ones above are alarming but it might just be thermals and shows some sort of regular pattern from NW to SE that might be confusing. Also, what does an out of focus image look like on a bright star without the ronchi ? Ie how well collimated is it actually ? I guess you already know you are looking for parallel lines to indicate the correct mirror spacing and theres a good amount of contrast on the lines so the spacing looks fine to me... Other eyes will help.

Very nice. The feet for the dome shed is a lot like my first one, so a word of caution, over time they will sink unevenly and the top ring will deform to match. I really like what you've done with the thin ply. Did you consider fibre glassing the outside Vs 2-part epoxy paint ? Very nice construction . Well done.

Reading this makes me feel we need an astronomers dark sky cam network so peeps can see what the sky is like at their chosen target location . Does promise it will be the same when you get there though. I do find that the met office forecast is good enough for that though.

I don't think the gamepad code in eqmod is listening for a Bluetooth device. I suspect the answer is an intermediary device that turn the device into appearing as a usb.

Have you tried passing the ring through a bike inner tube to provide the grip. It solved a similar problem I had. Needs some silicone to get the tube over the ring though.

I don't know about anyone else but right about now, a warm autumn day cooling towards winter , is when the bugs invade and jam up wheels, hide under all corners and worm into places they shouldn't be So I invested in this stuff to both preemptively and as a dispersal spray, kepp them out of the holes. https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B004W2FUWK?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title And so far it's working. My daughter says it's used on horses and wears off /evaporates but it's working so far. There's nothing I hate more than opening up the dome and getting showered with ladybirds that then go scuttling into collars and pockets. Better than conkers.

I find that it depends.... Typically it's always clear below -18C It's always cloudy above 5C It's in between where it can be tricky. I've had nights where the sky temp has been above zero and they were still clearer than other nights where it was below -5. I believed it was due to the direction of the prevailing wind at the time, bringing different bulk masses of air at different temperatures and humidities. If the air temperature is warmer than usual due to say coming up from the Sahara, it can still be clear and quite warm. If it's from the north or north east (for the UK) the air tends to be quite cold when it's clear. Which is when the -18 figure might be the useful figure. I have encoded this into my safety driver but what I really want to finish is my star detecror/cloud coverage estimator on the all sky camera.

Fair point.

Nothing indicated on aurorawatch from the magnetometers...

I also have built an Alpaca ASCOM controlled dew heater setup that uses the temperature of the scope and the domes central measurement of humidity/dewpoint to determine the amount of power to put into the heater band. Servos the value automatically. I won't claim its wonderful until more testing is complete but I hope so. M