Ags

I have thought about getting a Raspberry Pi for a few years but learning about Astroberry finally made me get one of these neat little computers. My goal is to monitor DSO captures from indoors, as well as finally getting plate solving to work. EEA from indoors is also a nice idea. The Pi comes in the worst cardboard box I have ever seen - after opening it to admire the PCB I could not close it again! My partner was skeptical - where is the anti-static film computer stuff normally arrives in? To my eyes it looked amazing, so compact with lots of USBs. It had to sit in it's rubbishy box for a few days waiting for the case, PSU, and memory card, which came today. I got this case, which I am very impressed with: https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B07ZVJDRF3/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 This aluminium case provides passive cooling via heat sinks connected by thermal tape to the main chips. It slots together nicely and looks very sharp and feels completely indestructible! Downloading Astroberry Server and balenaEtcher (to flash the SD card) was of course very simple as was the actual flashing process. The only hitch was my PC gave the blue screen of death when the flashing was finished. Then it was a simple matter of plugging in the power and my ASI 178 MM and pointing my laptop at the 'astroberry' network. I was already overjoyed to see the network was available, indicating the Pi was working and the OS flash had succeeded. General impressions of playing with Pi over VNC remote desktop? It is super fast and responsive, a better remote desktop experience than RDPing into my work Windows PC. The Astroberry desktop is logically laid out and simple to use, especially after I set the browser to full screen mode (F11) and changed the Pi configuration to Local Scaling so the Pi desktop was scaled to my screen (no scroll bars). I had plugged in my ASI 178 MM to see if the Pi would recognize it and it did! Playing with it in Oacapture went well, I couldn't get high frame rates (3 FPS with 2x2 binning) and the preview image kept jumping sideways, but once I switched to long exposures (5000 millis) it worked fine. Also had a look at Kstars and pretty pleased with it. I checked CPU temperature while testing and it was 41C, so the case is doing its job of cooling. It's a nice feeling to have a quality piece of kit that is cheap, looks good and seems to work flawlessly! And I have another SD card in the mail that will have Retropie installed. This little thing is going to let me relive the glory days of Missile Command. My partner is looking forward to replaying Sega Mega Drive Tetris and its classic soundtrack! Hopefully the Retropie will recognize our PS3 controllers. Swapping SD cards will get annoying so I am sure I will be getting another Pi soon 😀

Here is another shot from last night showing Castor and Pollux. Hand held stars - the wonders of modern technology.

Pi 4 alu case and 64Gb card. Setting up Astroberry tonight.

Guess I will just have to source all stuff from mainland Europe now. Too much red tape and confusion with UK purchases.

Looking up it looked a little like we were in orbit of a shadowy gas giant, with the Moon transiting the giant. Arguably the Sun could be behind the giant, faintly illuminating the atmosphere on the limb, but no explanation for why the Moon is then fully illuminated! F1.8 0.125 sec, iso 2500, 5.23mm, night Mode

Astroberry fun!

Some promising pictures here: https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/116765/new-pi-camera-any-good-for-astrophotography Also good thread on CN: https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/707144-new-raspberry-camera-v3-ascom-driver/ Definitely on the radar for me - nice project with a 3D printed case and little TEC cooler on the back. Same chip size as my ASI 178 MM so this could be used to shoot star color. Might also be interesting as a planetary camera.

Thanks - I have an unused SW Power Tank sitting under the stairs. It will finally gt some use...

Looking at getting aPi too but stuck on the silly issue of powering it. What battery pack do people usually use?

Not really. The Earth spinning one way is not equivalent to the rest of Universe spinning the other way. From any frame of reference, we know the Earth is spinning.

I thought of that too, but on the other hand people sell transparent Bahtinov Masks?

Why would I clean it?

I am thinking of making a Bahtinov Mask for my camera lenses from a cheap UV filter. I will just draw on a multi-line Y pattern with a black permanent marker. Any reason why this wouldn't work?

Trial and error mostly.

What I heant is 16x50 worked on the night, possibly better than 7x50 or 16x100 would have.

I think it is a delicate balance between image scale and contrast. A bigger exit pupil might have made the sky background too bright, while less magnification might have made the structures smaller and harder to see.

My best view of M31 was dark skies and 16x50 binoculars. I could see dust lanes and all! The only thing a bigger scope can offer is more scale for the same exit pupil. That doesn't help with M31 which is too huge already. So best views of M31 are in bins and small scopes.

So if we could increase something's temporal mass, it would travel slower in time and drift backwards relative to everything else?

Did you travel to 2001 recently, or haven’t you gone there yet?

Well, I was expecting the 100P to by mounted on a tripod using the thread in its base. So not really a dob. Owning both a Mak 102 and a C6 I do find the narrower field of view to be an issue - not for looking at things but for finding them. Particularly from a city, a wider field that allows hunting for the target is invaluable. Having said that, Maks provide exceptional views when you can find the target. A Mak 102 was my only scope for an enjoyable 10 years.

Apologies - I missed that. Of my suggestions that only leaves the 100P.

For visual use, forget about F ratio. You can use an F5 Newtonian to look at planets and an F13 Mak to look at deep sky. The only things that matter are light gathering and resolution which both increase with aperture and aren’t influenced in any way by F ratio. I would go for carbon fiber tripod, light mount like Skywatcher AZ5 or AZ GTi, and a small 70 mm ED scope. Instead of the ED scope you could save money and gain aperture with a 100 mm Heritage 100P. Both of these scope options would be lighter than the MAK 102 which is my main reason for suggesting them. I have had a Mak 102 for over 10 years and they are phenomenal scopes - great on double stars and planets and small DSOs like globular clusters. I have had bigger scopes but The Mak seems to have had the magic. The one downside of the Maks is the have long focal length, meaning they have a narrow field of view, so it can be hard to find things or star hop. To put it into context, the widest field the Mak 102 can show is just 10% of of the area the 100P can show.

Some bowls and a wall clock definitely don't count. But I also have this on the way...

Thanks - I have a vintage EP after all!

Yes just got the center column option as it might sometimes come in handy. Looking forward to trying out the tripod for visual and AP.