pete_l

Don't forget a fisheye lens. That can be another £120 😆

I have no way of knowing. Presumably the program runs on something like Freedos or Linux, with everything pre-configured. So it is just a case of install Virtualbox, load the image and hit Start. Although VirtualBox does have its own limitations. It only works on x86 or i64 hardware. So Raspberry Pi's, for example are out.

Be aware that Virtualbox does not contain an operating system. It is only the "bones" that allows you to run another operating system within the one that is already running on your computer. So, for example if you have a Windows 10 computer and you want to run another Windows (anything from W2K upwards) in a virtual machine, you will need to have another licensed copy of that Windows to install in the Virtual Machine that you create.

The trouble is that having sensors like a microphone, light, temp/humidity and proximity all on the board makes it impossible to put this in an enclosure.

Sounds sensible. Given that it is quick, cheap and easy to test if this is sufficient there is nothing to lose by giving it a try. If it works, then great! You have saved yourself a lot of unnecessary work. If not, you are no worse off (apart from the cost of a few paving slabs).

What dark frames do is remove part of the offset signal that the camera generates and also whatever hot pixels there are. This is the part that is dependent on the temperature of the camera sensor and the exposure time. It is important that sufficient numbers of dark frames are taken so that the resulting dark frame is smooth: no noise, or at least very little noise. The top frame has a lower "min" value, so it seems that the offset subtraction has worked to some extent. However, bear in mind that the dark frame you subtract cannot be noisy - you can't reduce the random noise in an image by subtracting more random noise We remove the image noise by stacking multiple calibrated subframes.

Maybe it's a bias due to my lack of mechanical skills but I am a great fan of minimising the number of moving parts in a machine. To do as much of the "clever" stuff as possible in software. I am in awe of a lot of the skill and genius that went into Victorian mechanisms. But give me a digital clock, over a magnificanlty crafted timepiece, any time!

Have a look at Samir Kharusi's work in this area. Alternatively. there may be a way to use a full moon (like yesterday's) as a sort of "standard candle". The amount of illumination it supplies will wash out most other sources of light pollution. You'd need someone close by with an SQM to help/

Option 4. Something else Bore a hole in the bottom of the enclosure large enough to get the usb connector through. Then fill the hole with an exterior grade mastic.

All but the most popular astro cameras are produced in batches. The demand simply isn't high enough for continuous runs. If a supplier cannot get any, they could well assume that the supply has stopped. But it could also be a ploy to dissuade a buyer from looking elsewhere and to buy something that they do have in stock. The sensor used in this camera has been discontinued, But that is probably true for many astro ccds (and cmos's) and manufacturers will have stockpiled supplies for their planned future production. Are there many cases where a spare sensor is required?

This is a name I hadn't seen before. Harmonic drives ooooooooh However the 170HD only has an imaging load of 18kg and still requires guiding. Zero backlash is a genuine benefit. But at £5k+ ? It is still competing in the EQ6 class

Raspbian is still only 32bit, you can't run a single process that uses more than 4GB

When I started with my HEQ5 I had it connected to a 12 Volt laptop supply. Just using the hand controller was fine. But when I had the controlling mini-PC connected to it via a commercial serial cable it became unusable. I had terrible trouble with "wild" slews, slews that mysteriously stopped, random movements - you name it. In earlier times the diagnosis would have been that the device was possessed. By using ASCOMs serial debugging, I could see that frequently the commands sent to the mount were getting corrupted or were just downright gibberish. By process of elimination, I discovered that substituting the mount's power supply for a 12V car battery made all the problems go away - as if by magic. Some web searching turned up a theory that the circuitry in the PSU that is supposed to filter interference from the switched mode power supply was the culprit (I don't recall the details). I built a transformer based power supply that used a linear regulator (7812 family) and I've never had a problem since.

It's probably not what you want to hear. However, when I lived in England (Marlow) I spent a lot of time on a project to assess the local weather. One thing I counted was the number of sunny days per month. For 2 years I scraped data from Met Office published data on the internet for my location and ran it through some scripts. The conclusion was that from October through to April there were single-digit number of clear days per month. For many months that single digit was a "1" . I also looked at the BBC forecasts and the results of that showed the best forecast was that tomorrow will be the same as today. That turned out to be the case more often than any predicted weather, no matter what that prediction was. The most frequent "on the day" forecast in the summer was sunny intervals (i.e. mostly cloudy) and in the winter it was cloudy with showers (translation: mostly cloudy). Not very helpful, I know.

It's been possible since RPI 3 days. Have a look at this youtube explanation for how to do it with an RPi 4

No. It only measures the darkness of what you point it at. Although the "width" of what it sees is quite broad. It is an interesting question about skyglow. It is caused by light that is shone upwards getting reflected off particles of dust or moisture in the air. The more cr*d you have in your air - the more pollution, for example - the more light will be reflected back down. So greater transparency will also darken the sky background. It will be interesting to see if amateurs have noticed better sky transparency and darkness during this time when there is acknowledged to be mush less air pollution. Especially if compared to this time last year.

Sounds like you need one of these Lacerta Concrete Pier Adapter for Skywatcher mount EQ6 and EQ8 The idea being that you insert it into your wet concrete as you are making the pier. There are home-made versions, but as far as simplicity goes, this is probably the easiest.

There isn't really an "edge" in that at one resolution your images will be crystal clear and at 0.00001 arc-sec more/less, they will be unusable. There is a gradual - veeeeeeery gradual - change in image quality as resolution goes from under-sampled through "ideal" to over-sampled. Once processed, the difference between an image taken at 1 arc-sec per px and another taken at 2 will be so slight that it comes down to personal preference which one is better. And most of that will be due to the computer monitor that viewers are using I wouldn't sweat it.

the strace utility will give you a dump of all the system activity that the program made. That should help you see what went wrong. Run as strace /usr/bin/raspistill ..... and be prepared for lots of output!

Full frame, wide field, including flattener, less than £1k ..... Have you considered the 61EDPH. 61mm f/4,5 (274mm fl) 5 element - three of which are the flattener, "usable" up to full frame.

http://www.smartgauge.co.uk/batt_con.html HTH

Yes. That's the thing. People tend not to sell stuff that just works. No fuss, no frustration, that "does what it says on the tin" There will occasionally be a few, from people who are giving up the hobby and maybe some from people who just get bored with the same old gear. But in general, it seems to me the best recommendation for equipment is when there are very few on the s/h market. And also: with the collapse in worldwide logistics, you could be waiting a time for a new one to appear!

Nice image. Though I did wonder then the text says "lightning strikes and storm systems forming around deep clouds of water ice and liquid." The same words appear on Phys.org's website. Is that true?

A couple of days ago I got an email from Aliexpress to say that my order had been shipped. It was placed on Jan 25. I have two other orders from mid-March. They have been stuck in Liege (Belgium) for the past 6 weeks. The biggest issue with international shipping is that almost no flights are operating. Wholesale carriage rates have increased, too.

Looking at the spec sheet it has absolutely tiny 1.55u pixels, However the chip does have what it calls "Pixel binning readout and V sub-sampling function" so there could be a mode where it can be used in an astronomical setting, despite being a colour camera. If there is software that will do the binning.