Mognet

I've looked a couple of times, and zoomed in too. I can't see anything out of the ordinary with it. It's a good image to me

I would suspect a Starlink launch too. It doesn't look the plane trails I see here

It's an interesting idea, but I have concerns about practicality when they scale up especially the hold and release mechanism and release timing. If they get these wrong the results could be messy Scott Manley has produced a video about this too, and he raises a different set of questions.

There are some interesting ideas in there. I am especially intrigued about the harmonic drive with a compliant mechanism. I've had a vague plan for a while to print a star tracker, possibly with own software too, so might use some of this as a starting point

I think that's the one my girlfriend told me she'd seen. It was blue and white. I missed seeing them as the skies weren't great here so I stayed indoors

If anyone hasn't found it yet, live launch coverage here. Not long to go!

I did a little digging and it seems to be a quote from Roger Horchow in The Art of Friendship (https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/6732.Roger_Horchow) Still no idea if it's genuine, but it seems that Bass himself objected to the tale even though he did seem to be on the talkative side (https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/2000/december/living-legends-largemouth-bass/) As for Armstrong's humility, this quote from Neil Gaiman says a lot

An alternative to AllSkEye is Thomas Jacquin's Raspberry Pi based code, which is popular on SGL. It uses an ASI camera. Complete build instructions are here http://www.thomasjacquin.com/make-your-own-allsky-camera/ Or there's my own entry level code https://github.com/MarkGrimwood/Mognet-All-Sky-Camera-install (and SGL disussion thread https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/376932-another-all-sky-camera/)

Looks like most of the site was copied by the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Not all of it is there though but might be worth a look https://web.archive.org/web/20110201223601/http://catamountsystems.com/

Once the US has got used to roundabouts, we've got some more fun stuff to export!

I'm another hybrid person, but when it comes to measuring or design work I stick with imperial measurements unless it comes to a persons height. Walking and driving distances are always miles or time I have noticed imperial measurements cropping up in odd places still. Looking at the original set models for the Harry Potter films at Leavesden I noticed that all the scales are imperial. Tthree eigths of an inch to the foot, or 1/32nd scale seems to be the common one

That same inconsitancy is applied to eyepieces too. 1.25 and 2 inch adaptors, but measured as 32mm, 25mm, etc in focal length.

I think we're going to need a bigger scope! Grinding a monolithic telescope of 200mm or more diameter could be a bit of a tricky prospect though

That would explain the use of Imperial measurements at the time. I never saw things at the PCB design stage, it was only the solder paste stencil design stage. Lots of comparing drawings on a lightbox and staring down measuring microscopes while calculating percentages in my head Sounds like the oil industry may be worse!

I used to work for a solder paste stencil manufacturer and the customer designs we received were always in imperial units. Pitches were measured in thousandths of an inch at the time, the finest pitch we'd usually see was 0.008" (I think) and occasionally an experimental 0.004" for one of the universities That was 25 years ago and I haven't kept up with the modern practices so they may have switched to metric now. Never questioned it at the time even though the UK was already mostly metric by then. Possibly a lot of designs originated in the US?

That solid Schmidt does look similar, and means that the solid telescope is not a new idea. LLNL claim to have a patent on their design, so I wonder how this would affect it. I also didn't see anything to say when Rik ter Horst had come up with his idea as it looks like he's been making them for a few years

Just got another red alert. Clouded out in Essex though, and possibly too far south to see it anyway

I have almost the ideal glass for that. Except it only measures lager apparently 🤣

Thanks for that. It looks like they are quite capable performers, and certainly well suited to satellite and UAV use as they won't be prone to vibration related problems

Definitely a night owl here. A 2am bedtime isn't unusual at the moment. That will probably have to change when I'm working again

Downloaded it last night and had a quick play. Just watched a batch of tutorial videos and it looks quite good. Only thing that seems to be missing compared to FreeCad and Fusion 360 is constraints in sketching. I initially found them frustrating, but they are also useful at times Also has constraints, which are not on by default but need to be enabled in settings

OpenSCad is good but slow, and designs can take some thinking about. FreeCad I find frequently frustrating. Fusion 360 is brilliant, but takes ages to load on my laptop. Updates are worse as they can take 30+ minutes

Visual design tools are much easier to use. I chose OpenSCad over FreeCAD for this project as I didn't have the patience to get threads working

That's ok. Perhaps I should have used this photo originally. It shows the whole thing with the camera too That rod could be a problem. I don't think it needs to be that long either, and at larger angles the mount may not be able to cope with the shifted weight. I'll see if I can come up with something stronger and more stable that can still be adjustable Thanks. I used OpenSCad for the design, and the thread uses this bit of code. It creates a 2D shape of the cross section of the thread and the extrudes and rotates it module adjustment_thread(height, threadTolerance = 0) { threadDepth = screwThreadDepth - threadTolerance; innerRadius = rScrewThread - screwThreadDepth - threadTolerance; function ra(x, z) = [x * sin(360 * z), x * cos(360 * z)]; input = [ for (lp = [0:0.05:1]) ra(innerRadius + (threadDepth * lp), lp / 4), for (lp = [0:0.05:1]) ra(innerRadius + threadDepth, 0.25 + lp / 4), for (lp = [0:0.05:1]) ra(innerRadius + (threadDepth * (1 - lp)), 0.5 + lp / 4), for (lp = [0:0.05:1]) ra(innerRadius + 0, 0.75 + lp / 4) ]; translate([0, -adjustmentBlockPlateLength, offsetToTop - bodyThickness / 2]) rotate([0, 180, 0]) linear_extrude(height = height, twist = -(height/(screwThreadDepth*4)*360)) polygon(points = input); }

Same here, even if to only experiement with I'm curious as to how they perform. I couldn't find anything with a quick search, but if they are going to be using one in a satellite then they must perform well