sockatume

I wasn’t sure where to put this so I’m dropping it here, and sorry in advance if I missed an existing thread for this sort of thing (I had a look). Mostly for its own sake, I wrote an iOS Shortcuts script that checks the current weather and the weather between sunrise and sunset, then reports if it’s clear now and what time it will be clear later. You can set it to run on a schedule, for example an hour after sunset, and be automatically prompted each day to get your telescope out: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/ab19d1ccf0334dc3b2dd776bee812d4a Okay, so I have about 8 other ways of getting this information from actual professional apps. The other reason for posting this is in case anyone winds up trying to make something useful later, I wanted to share some useful notes on how iOS presents sunrise and sunset times in Shortcuts First, the Daily Weather Forecast. The first item in that List output has the predicted and observed weather conditions for the current calendar date from 0000 to 2359 local time. That includes sunrise and sunset, it’s done by the calendar day. (Perhaps obvious but it may not have been so I had to confirm it!) Likewise for the subsequent items, they’re the same data for subsequent calendar dates. Current Conditions can also give you a sunrise and sunset, and those are... actually most of the time exactly like the ones for the first entry on the daily forecast. However it updates to give you the sunrise and sunset for the *next* calendar day at some time between 2345 and 0000, not at 0000, so you shouldn’t use this action to get that data. It’s unreliable. In testing the above bug I sadly discovered that automations don’t run reliably shortly after midnight local time. They just silently don’t get run. Lastly, when you set a shortcut to run automatically as an automation, you always get a notification from the Shortcuts app, even if the process makes no output of its own. My first version of this script didn’t display a notification unless there were good stargazing prospects, but it’s going to nag you anyway so it might as well display information. I am sure some less disastrous programmers than me have done fun things with scraping data online, but I’d love a proper astronomy app that exposed data to Shortcuts in a convenient way.

Thanks both (and please excuse the late reply!). I'll put cleaning up the threads on the to-do list for any future serious maintenance of the 'scope (e.g. if I ever need to wash the mirror).

I had the locking screws just finger-tight but maybe the metal is a bit soft. There's probably some spares kicking around online I guess? Edit - I'm being silly, if it becomes a problem I could just equally loosen all of the knobs and get far enough away from the clicky spots while having the same collimation..

I dusted off my Skywatcher Heritage 130p (who knew that lockdown would coincide with such bad weather?) and decided to check the collimation as I'd not done that in about a year. The collimation needed a little bit of a tweak, and was surprised to find that all three of the actual collimation thumbscrews (not the locking screws!) now click quite distinctly and noisily in to the exact position I had it in previously. It's like it has a detent now! I'm not sure quite how that could be happening mechanically but it seems that something must've worn or seized. Should I be worried about that? The screws otherwise turn smoothly and it isn't (yet) getting in the way of adjusting the collimation, but if it picks up a click for every position it's left in it soon will!

Thanks all, I think I'll get the 21st Century... and the laminated field map to get me started. It looks like there's another Sky and Telescope map, "Sky And Telescope's Moon Map", rather than "Sky and Telescope's Field Map of the Moon" pictured above, but from the dimensions I figure that's probably a single square map folded in half rather than four big quadrants.

I’ve been enjoying the moon sections of Turn Left at Orion, especially as it’s an object that doesn’t depend on particularly pristine dark skies. The book’s little tours are fun but I’ve now got a hankering for a good set of reference maps I can use when I spot an interesting feature. I do own a Philips map but it’s more suitable for a wall than next to a telescope. Is there a good reference book for this? Something ring bound or spiral bound would be ideal for using next to my telescope but that’s not mandatory. Thanks in advance!