Mognet

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

The YouTube recommendation algorithm brought this up, a monolithic Schmidt-Cassegrain, and it's tiny! Rik ter Horst has been making these by hand for a while

Hi, That's ok. It basically converts the alt-az mount into an equatorial mount, so what is normally the vertical axis (the azimuth axis) becomes the equatorial axis Alignment is crude. The camera is set parallel to the equatorial axis using the markers that were already on the mount, and then the mount is roughly aligned with Polaris. After that the handset controls are used to point the camera at the appropriate patch of sky, and the mount rotation should match that of the stars Thanks. I did consider creating a fixed angle version, which would have been fine for my use, but I wanted to share it with the community too so opted for the adaptable version. The hinge seems to take most of the weight, so I think it's fairly safe. I wouldn't trust it with anything more than the weight of my camera and 70-300 lens, i.e. less than a kilo

Thanks I don't think that's an option for this mount. Certainly nothing obvious from looking at their site and I didn't see anything in the handset menu for it

Thanks. 3D printing is quite capable of things like this, and more too. Several members here use 3D printing for lots of things, including clocks, telescopes and rockets for display The biggest of the telescopes. Chriske has made several different types Rocket for display, also by Chriske And one of Gina's clocks

Hoping the skies stay clear tonight so I can test version 2 I adjusted some of the dimensions and took out the nice curves that fitted the base as they were a bit of a pain to place properly and their positions weren't calculated. The result isn't quite as pretty but it will still work. This version was printed and set up about a month ago and there doesn't seem to be any warping of the PLA so far, unlike the previous version. There is a wobble in the adaptor which seems to be due to play in the adjustment screw and mounts. I might also need to boost the thickness of some parts too

The booster landing is always amazing to watch

Have made a minor update to take it to v1.2.6 This time I found that surplus jpg files were not being deleted before new movies were created. I'd turned off the power here without shutting down the cameras cleanly first and a jpg file wasn't added into the daytime movie that day, but was left hanging around. That meant it kept getting added in at the start of every daytime movie as that part uses a wildcard add rather than named file. The code to clear the surplus files relied on a wildcard which doesn't seem to work with a file delete in Bash, even though it does from the command line

Next Blue Origin launch is scheduled for 14:00 UTC Wednesday having already been postponed due to wind https://www.blueorigin.com/

Pete @astrolunartick has made several lightweight scopes for backpacking that show what can be achieved

I'm curious as to what you will make next. Your build threads are fascinating

That's better And the finished rocket looks fantastic. Well done to all involved 😀

I got the alert on Friday night too. First one I've seen in the four years I've had the app. Went outside to check and it was completely clouded out. As is typical the sky started to clear again once the alert level was back down to yellow

Seems to be an issue with the link. I get the same message too

The Register interviews Brent Waller, one of the designers. Apparently it's 99.8% accurate on relative timing https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/15/lego_solar_system/

Looks good. Glad you're getting on with it and you got your MQTT input sorted I know what you mean about the clear skies and full moon. Went out to check the skies last night and Jupiter was sparking, but the full moon washed everything else out. Tonight had been promising until about ten minutes ago when clouds rolled in again I didn't bother updating the about page with the last change as v1.2.5 only affected the install scripts. They'll be realigned with the next change