Mognet

On 27/02/2022 at 15:36, Rusted said:

Does anyone else see a vertical texture overlying the image?

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

15 hours ago, AstroKeith said:

And then a beauty came through

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

Quote

On my second or third night there, I was standing at the back of the hall, while a musical entertainment happened, and I started talking to a very nice, polite, elderly gentleman about several things, including our shared first name. And then he pointed to the hall of people, and said words to the effect of, “I just look at all these people, and I think, what the heck am I doing here? They’ve made amazing things. I just went where I was sent.”

And I said, “Yes. But you were the first man on the moon. I think that counts for something.”

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

12 minutes ago, gorann said:

It struck me that we are no better in being consistent with units. Why do we often give aperture of our scopes in inches while we would never consider giving the focal length in inches. This does not help when you rapidly want to calculate the focal length of 6" scope from the f-ratio, or vice versa....

Cheers, Göran

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

4 hours ago, Priesters said:

Yep, want one too but can someone tell me where/how I attach my 32mm panaview?

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!

2 hours ago, Carbon Brush said:

Almost all new chips produced now, and for the past decade, have been surface mount and often with sub-millimetre lead pitch.
About the only 'inch' devices are surface mount with 1.27 or 0.05" pitch. Even they are not generally seen in manufacturers new products.

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

10 hours ago, Carbon Brush said:

This evening I might relax with a 0.568 litre glass of beer.

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

38 minutes ago, McQ said:

Followup by the group that commissioned the tiny scopes.

 

 

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

7 hours ago, Gasman said:

Have you tried DesignSpark Mechanical at all? It's a freebie cad app for Windows and very intuitive. If I can learn Cad with it anyone can 😏.

Steve

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

12 minutes ago, Chriske said:

Not my cup of tea....😳😳😳😳

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

3 hours ago, Chriske said:

ok, now I'v got it..!  I thought the upper grey and black part were also printed...silly me...

That's ok. Perhaps I should have used this photo originally. It shows the whole thing with the camera too

3 hours ago, Chriske said:

Suggestion, change the threaded rod with something more stable, as Peter also explained. I'd print a wedge to fill in that gap + a little possible polar tuning. Or is there really need for that long threaded rod..?

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

3 hours ago, Chriske said:

That rod btw: nice print, very nice print indeed...!

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);
}

9 minutes ago, Alien 13 said:

I want one...

Alan

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