Astro Noodles

I do think it is interesting that these C8th forebears of ours would read so much into meteorological and astronomical phenomena.

They were equal to us in intelligence, but not in scientific knowledge. 

Having said that, I will have egg on my face if there is a Viking invasion in the next few months. 😁

Of course, it might not be a meteor or space junk at all.

Anglo Saxon Chronicle 793AD

Here were dreadful forewarnings come over the land of Northumbria, and woefully terrified the people: these were amazing sheets of lightning and whirlwinds, and fiery dragons were seen flying in the sky. A great famine soon followed these signs, and shortly after in the same year, on the sixth day before the ides of January, the woeful inroads of heathen men destroyed god’s church in Lindisfarne island by fierce robbery and slaughter. And Sicga died on the eighth day before the calends of March.

Just having a look at your light pollution map from the initial post tells me two things.

1. Your night skies must be amazing.

2. Just how big America is. 🙂

I have been using a Canon 600D with the IR filter removed. I have found it to be very enjoyable to use, and the flip out screen is really useful. 

Having used camera lenses vs astrographs I would say that from my experience an astrograph would generally be better than a zoom lens or even a fixed focus length camera lens because astrographs are designed to focus at infinity.

I am not familiar with the TPO lens you are thinking of getting but a 180 f4.5 would work very well with the iOptron mount.

Oh - by the way, I like your collection of pipes. 😁

I use an iOptron Skyguider Pro.

I think it is an excellent mount.

It is very important to make sure it is perfectly balanced.

What lenses are you using?

I find that I can easily get 60 sec exposures with a 61mm F5.9 scope and 90 sec with a 200mm camera lens.

The idea is to use the mount for beginner AP. 

Do you think this would be up to the job for 30 sec/60 sec exposures with a DSLR instead of the scope?

Can anyone identify this ?

Found in someone's attic. 🙂

If it had any flashing lights it was almost certainly an aircraft. At 10.45 it would presumably be twilight in Vancouver? Perhaps an aircraft at altitude with the sun, just below the horizon was reflecting off the lower surfaces of the aircraft. 

If you could see it moving, it was not a comet.

How big was it compared to other objects you could see?

Did it have a colour?

What time of night was it?

How far above the horizon?

Was it moving in relation to the stars?

Hi and welcome to SGL

I have a WO61 with field flattener and an ASI 294MC. The camera comes with the correct spacers to attach directly to the field flattener.

Could have been a glint from a satellite.

I read that the people who painted the animals in the cave at Lascaux 17,000 years ago interpreted the constellation of Taurus as a bull (or an Aurochs). It has been suggested that the sequence of dots around it's eye are a representation of the Hyades with Aldebaran as the beast's eye. Over it's shoulder are the Pleiades.

I think it a bit of a stretch to come to this conclusion, but not inconceivable. Assuming of course that the stars have conveniently staid in roughly the same position for all that time.

I just had an email from Lulu to say mine has shipped.🙂

Very exciting.

Thanks for the replies/suggestions

I suppose that one benefit of British weather is that you get plenty of time to think about problems.

I have downloaded the drivers and am going to use my laptop in the first instance before I use the Raspberry Pi.

It is my belief that most of my issues are power-related. I have ordered a proper 12v/5a power supply for the camera and a nice waterproof 4 gang plug extension. 

Raspberry pi problems are probably due to SD card format issues.

32 minutes ago, Ratlet said:

It's funny, but home-brewing went through a similar thing recently.  Used to be that building everything, the boiler, the mashtun, the fermentation chamber, etc was part of it, and a lot of people still do.  At some point in the decade since I stopped all-in-one systems became popular.  Initially they were very expensive, but quickly the price dropped and now I think the majority just buy an off the shelf setup.  Also the quality of the ready made kits (just add water) has gotten really good.  I recently got an all in one gifted to me, but tried a kit and now do both (Woodfordes Wherry is heavenly ambrosia) kits for a quick pint, all grain for a more full flavour behaviour.

I guess I'm saying there are parallels with the development of these setups, there will be people who will only be interested in the photons hitting their eyeball, there will be people who want to get the perfect image and tease out the last detail and bit of data and there will be people who will love just setting a robot up and having wonderful images develop before their eyes.

Magnificent times!

A very good comparison.

1 minute ago, ONIKKINEN said:

This cost is probably derived from a full payload launch, so there would have to be an awful lot of amateur scopes going up to fill the entire rocket! Remember the cost of the rocket with nothing sitting in the payload fairing is pretty much the same as launching the thing with a max payload. Ride sharing with a bigger launch is more likely, but i doubt this will get anywhere close to the theoretical price either.

Many things need to be ensured for a space telescope to work at all and this price will easily be more than the launch cost. It will need a propulsion system for orbital maneuvers, that is if you dont want the scope to re-enter the atmosphere and become a cloud of plasma and a puff of smoke. Also some kind of high resolution pointing system, with probably reaction wheels and gyroscopes. Will also need power, communications and epic thermal design. In orbit the temperatures can range from -100c to 100c so you just cant have any old scope and throw it into orbit and expect it to work. Realistically the scope needs to be kept cool both passively and actively when on the sunlit side and still be built from very low thermal expansion materials = Basically entirely carbon fiber.

But for lets say 1 million $ one could probably get a small private space telescope up with the rideshare option. Its pipedream money for most, but not all people so i think this may qualify as an "amateur" space telescope then?

I agree, for $1 million I think you start getting into the realms of thinking about doing it. In 20 to 30 years time I'm convinced that an amateur group will have put their own telescope into orbit. Or perhaps a commercial enterprise.

Vintage Micro: The Amateur Space Telescope | Drew Ex Machina

An amateur space telescope? - Free Online Library (thefreelibrary.com)

Certainly attempts to get amateur space telescopes into orbit have failed so far due to a number of technical and cost limitations. But as technology improves and costs come down, I think within a couple of decades someone will have done it. After all - 30 years ago, how many amateurs had access to a telescope with CMOS cameras, powerful laptop computers, advanced stacking and processing software, guiding, wireless, broadband etc ?

Thanks for the write-up Danny.

I have just got an L-Enhance which I have been using with my modded 600D. It has been a real step change in reducing light noise and makes processing so much easier with better results. It would seem that these filters are a really worthwhile investment.

Just been doing some internet browsing and it seems that the cost of a SpaceX low orbit launch is less than $3000 per KG, compared to more than $50,000 per KG for the Space Shuttle. Mr Musk is saying that when Starship is operational the costs will drop to the tens of dollars per KG. 

It seems that the age of the amateur space telescope may be closer than thought.

Just downloaded the Raspberry pi operating system and saved it onto the micro SD card. That might help.

25 minutes ago, ONIKKINEN said:

I had a terrible experience with this powertank so wouldnt recommend it. I see that some others have not so terrible experiences so mine might be from a monday morning batch of units but anyways.

This powertank has a DC port and 2 USB ports, but only one of these can be used at any one time, so you dont really have 3 ports to use if you planned to use the USB ports while the DC port is running too. The DC port is also a "smart" port so you cannot choose to supply power or not, the powertank will choose for you. If the power consumption is too low the powertank goes to sleep and you lose power, also if its too large, and by too large i mean anything that is greater than 3A by even a little bit for 1/10th of a second, the powertank shuts power off. For instance using this to power an equatorial mount will mean that during every go-to the powertank shuts power off because probably for a fraction of a second there is a current spike. Terrible design and not one i cant not recommend when given the chance!

That being said, i doubt there are many current spikes when powering a camera as its more or less constant power required rather than 1 moment no power and another moment full power with 2 motors.

It is a strange battery. I thought it would solve a lot of issues for me but it has just created extra ones. It is great for powering a dew heater strap, but seems pretty useless for anything else. I have a feeling that the camera draws too little charge for it.

I'm trying to run my 294mc from a Celestron power tank.

It should be enough shouldn't it?

Celestron Lithium 7.2 Ah LiFePO4 Powertank | First Light Optics

Why can't things just work? I guess the answer to my rhetorical question would be along the lines of - if they did then no-one would have anything to do.

I have been accumulating kit over the last few months. Picking up good deals on the astro buy/sell. I'm not really in any hurry to upgrade or increase the complexity of my setup. I'm having a great deal of fun at the moment with a basic setup and still have some way to go before I reach the limits of what I can achieve with it.

So, in order to automate my sessions, I bought a laptop and downloaded APT. I plugged in my Canon 1100d and started a session. No problem, easy to use. Then I dropped the camera and damaged the USB port. No problem. I can do imaging without APT.

I acquired a Raspberry pi4 from a fellow member with astroberry etc installed. I plugged it in, connected to a monitor and everything was fine. Tried to connect it to my home wifi. Couldn't figure out how to do that so I bought a nice little touchscreen monitor to leave outside with the rig. So I plugged it all in but the raspberry pi started playing up and won't boot up properly grrrr. 😟 So I don't know what's up with it. It isn't the monitor I've checked. 

I got a nice ASI294mc from a fellow member. Downloaded the Ascom platform onto my laptop. Downloaded drivers, purchased the full version of APT. Can I get it to recognise the camera? you guessed it.

Never mind. Mrs Noodles went to get her hair cut today and very thoughtfully picked me up a nice bottle of wine. 😁

I am in no way discouraged, just a little frustrated as my facility with connectivity isn't what it needs to be.

I think I'll put all this fancy stuff away for the time being and come back to it when I feel braver.

2 hours ago, DaveS said:

There are some other channels that I subscribe to, only distantly related to astronomy 

Scott Manley, a bit of everything space related 

Sabine Hosenfelder pretty serious science 

NASA Spaceflight 

The Angry Astronaut, some serious rants!

The Everyday Astronaut, easy to watch, but he has some deep dives into rocket science.

Deffo NASA Spaceflight for Starship launches.