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Demonperformer

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Demonperformer last won the day on December 6 2018

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  1. Thanks for the replies. @ Budgie1 - good point, checked and it is "https" @vlaiv - Device running Android 5.1.1 [X1 list states "Andoid>=7.1.1 (but Android >=2.3.6 will sork by default)"]. Not quite sure why it says I would need >=7.1.1 if >=2.3.6 will work?? However, the problem seems to have resolved itself now I am back within range of my router - a fact which may or may not be a coincidence (can't think why it would care whether I am accessing it that way or through normal wifi). Guess I will just have to keep an eye on it and see if I can spot anything if it happens again. Thanks.
  2. Anyone else having problems accessing FLO?
  3. Thanks for all the responses. Seems the general concensus is better to go for the fluid (+ cotton buds - "damp not dripping"), rather than the pen, together with a blower - don't think any of the visible 'splodges' would be removable with that, but I guess a tiny dust particle can still do lots of damage to the lens coatings if I drag it across the surface with a cotton bud and the extra £4 is not going to break the bank. It is a 32mm meade 4000 and i have checked the rubber cup and the insertion tube are removable, so that should help. Thanks.
  4. I have decided that the time has come to do something about the state of my favourite eyepiece - see pic, and yes, those speckles are actually on the eyepiece, although I am not totally sure which end. One option would appear to be this item, reasonably cheap, but no reviews, so has anyone used one of these and what was the verdict? A significantly more expensive option would appear to be this, which has a series of glowing reviews, but is it worth the extra cost? Also not sure I could get a cloth into the eyepiece tube (particularly the end that is opposite the eyecup) without poking it in with a stick, which seems rather aggressive for such an operation. So any advice on which is my best cost-effective option welcome. Thanks.
  5. Thank you for that response, Martin. I think the idea of rebuilding the program from the original c is well beyond me, but at least I now understand why I couldn't get it to work. Thanks.
  6. That is a really nice picture. I love it when people go after the really obscure and find them.
  7. Yes, I have python installed (not sure what anaconda is - its webpage talks about it being for development, which is waaaay outside my wheelhouse) and regularly use it to run pyephem. It seems (from the webpage) that it is montagepy that requires either unix or linux. Thanks.
  8. Thanks all for the replies. Looking at it again, it looks as if (as mentioned above) it is unix/linux only. Back to the drawing board ....
  9. I am trying to install Montage to combine images into a mosaic. I have downloaded the package (Montage_v6.0.tar.gz) and extracted it - it gave me another archive (Montage_06Nov 18.tar) which, upon extraction produced the array of files shown in the image in the folder: c:\admin\downloads\montage\montage. Now, following the instructions given (Use the command: $ pip install MontagePy) I get the results show on the final image. As you will see, I have navigated my way through the tree, trying at each stop, and always get the answer: ERROR: Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement MontagePy (from versions: none) ERROR: No matching distribution found for MontagePy My searches on the internet turn up pages that I am sure would mean something to someone with an advanced degree in 'computing with python', but mean very little to someone who needs 'python for extra-dumb dummies'. If it is relevant, I am using Python 3.10.11 (but not using that to run the pip command). Can any of our computer experts offer suggestions as to why I am failing so miserably? Thanks.
  10. Thanks for your comments, Paul. Having had a bit more time to think about this, I can see that in principle a co-ordinate system that never needs updating would be a good thing, but I see two issues with it: (1) At the moment I can look at a star's coordinates and determine how far above the horizon it will ever get for me at this latitude, but gradually that is going to become no longer true. Ultimately, in 12 millenia, stars that have an RA of about 18h hours will have a limiting declination (at my location) of about 85°S, whilst stars with an RA of about 6h will have a limiting declination of about zero (the celestial equator). Granted, this is not going to affect me a lot, but in the long term it strikes me that that would be weird (or is it just that my imagination is limited by the current system??) (2) New co-ordinates are still going to need to be created at intervals to account for proper motion. A quick straw-poll of the 2380 stars in BD+89 to BD+85 (excluding the four for which no PM values are provided) give an average (combined) PM of 28.867mas/yr, so in 100 years that is an average of just under 2.9 arc-seconds, which is just under 0.0008°. Although there is some variation, Simbad generally lists co-ordinates to 8 decimal places of a degree, or about 12500x this rate of change. So I'm thinking that to meaningly accommodate PM, new co-ordinates are still going to have to be produced at regular intervals (but maybe not as frequently as under the FK5 system?) and if they are going to have to do that, they may as well have stuck with a system that relates to what we actually see. That said, I will have "fallen off the perch" long before any of this makes any significant practical difference to me, so maybe I should just accept the fact that I don't need to find a way of generating 2050 co-ordinates, giving me one less thing to worry about. Thanks.
  11. I was looking for information on the internet on formulae to calculate precession values (with a view to working out some 2050 values (en masse - i have a python prog that does it for individual co-ordinates quite well), which - I thought - should start to be more accurate than the 2000 values in the next couple of years - don't ask, I just do this sort of thing!) and came across this paper: https://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2008ASPC..394..179W If I am reading this correctly, it says that co-ordinates are no longer precessing as long as we use the ICRS co-ordinates. In other words, Polaris - with ICRS co-ordinates of 02-31-49.09456 +89-15-50.7923 [according to SIMBAD] - will have exactly the same co-ordinates in 12000 years when it is nearly 45° away from the NCP instead of just 45'. Is that really what it is saying? Am I really understanding it correctly ['understanding' in this instance is used in the loosest possible sense ... and then some!]? It doesn't appear to have been published on April 1st! At the moment, this concept strikes me as incredibly weird and completely unworkable, but if that is what it is saying, I will try to get my brain around it. Thanks.
  12. Thanks, Gus. Don't know how I failed to find that page. Following one of the links, I discovered a page that states: "As of 1 January 2000, the positions of the ecliptic poles expressed in equatorial coordinates, as a consequence of Earth's axial tilt, are the following: North: right ascension 18h 0m 0.0s (exact), declination +66° 33′ 38.55″. So I guess the the answer is not as obscure as I thought! Thanks.
  13. ... that is of absolutely no importance, but has wormed its way into my thinking and for that reason alone I need to find a solution to it. The North Celestial Pole is on the move. It prescribes a circle in the sky over a period of about 26,000(?) years. This circle must have a centre and I started wondering where it is. I dredged up from my memory that about 4,000 years ago it was somewhere near Thuban and that in about 12,000 years time it will be near Vega. So for my first approximation I drew a circle linking these three stars and arrived at a centre somewhere in the vicinity of 36 Draconis (give or take a degree or two!). But that has not satiated my curiosity. I'm wondering if either there is a mathematical method of working out its co-ordinates (I'm sure there is one, but it is outside of my mathematical knowledge/ability to work out what it is) or indeed if these co-ordinates are "out there" on the internet somewhere (obviously posted by someone with as little of a life as I have), but I've not been able to find them. Clearly these co-ordinates would be dependant upon the co-ordinate system used; so I would ideally opt for "ICRS J2000", but I would be willing to work with any other system if they could provide an answer. So, having defeated me, I turn this question over to the SGL-megamind to see if anyone has an answer. Thanks.
  14. Thanks, Martin. That is certainly an idea. But I am surprised at the lack of an option to just get it to output in a particular order, particularly as it is capable of sorting the results in HTML.
  15. Having to play dodge the clouds here, but getting a few reasonable views.
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