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Indispensable Kit?

Mak the Night

By Mak the Night
in The Astro Lounge

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Yearofthegoat

Yearofthegoat

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Ermm ... I'm a tad concerned about stick-on stuff.

I was too until I read through the posts about removing a Telrad. I just stuck it on - but I would have much preferred to somehow slot it into the holder for the almost useless finderscope that came with my 150PDS.

Anyway my top indispensible kit item is indeed my Telrad. Just makes the whole experience much more enjoyable and far far easier.

My other indispensible items are:

Windstopper hat - it's not super warm in itself but keeping the wind out is more than half the battle won.

And lastly, laptop with internet access and Stellarium! I use it for planning sessions, amusing (+educating?) the kids, and as of last night, pointing my HEQ5 - such a great program.

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Mak the Night

Mak the Night

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I was too until I read through the posts about removing a Telrad. I just stuck it on - but I would have much preferred to somehow slot it into the holder for the almost useless finderscope that came with my 150PDS.

Anyway my top indispensible kit item is indeed my Telrad. Just makes the whole experience much more enjoyable and far far easier.

My other indispensible items are:

Windstopper hat - it's not super warm in itself but keeping the wind out is more than half the battle won.

And lastly, laptop with internet access and Stellarium! I use it for planning sessions, amusing (+educating?) the kids, and as of last night, pointing my HEQ5 - such a great program.

Yeah, I missed Stellarium when I couldn't run it on Windows anymore. It runs fine on my Ubuntu laptop and is the most popular astronomy program in the Ubuntu repo. On my small Mak I have a TS Optics RDAC which can find most things, anything too faint or near the zenith and a I just swap it out for the RACI. Aiming a Mak at anything without a finder is a near impossibility.

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Yearofthegoat

Yearofthegoat

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Stellarium is great. I briefly tried Cartes du Ciel and preferred Stellarium, but I haven't given CdC a fair trial yet.

I tried Ubuntu on an old Fujitsu P1610 a little while back with the idea being it woud be my astro laptop but it was too slow and too steep a learning curve to speed it up, so went back to a heavily stripped-down Vista install oddly enough. Might give Ubuntu another go if I have time to play with it. All that said, I mostly take my Win8.1 i7 tablet PC outside now, it's just easier - Mrs Goat has an aversion to me spending time 'fiddling'...!

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Mak the Night

Mak the Night

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Stellarium is great. I briefly tried Cartes du Ciel and preferred Stellarium, but I haven't given CdC a fair trial yet.

I tried Ubuntu on an old Fujitsu P1610 a little while back with the idea being it woud be my astro laptop but it was too slow and too steep a learning curve to speed it up, so went back to a heavily stripped-down Vista install oddly enough. Might give Ubuntu another go if I have time to play with it. All that said, I mostly take my Win8.1 i7 tablet PC outside now, it's just easier - Mrs Goat has an aversion to me spending time 'fiddling'...!

I bought a Lenovo laptop last year preinstalled with Ubuntu 14.0.4 LTS (Trusty Tahr). CdC can pretty easily be added to it using the terminal as it isn't in the repo. UNIX is OK if you can get your head around it, I like it because of the security benefits, it's nice to be able to surf without an anti-virus program or consistently worry about buffer overflow infections. I run a Win 7 desktop with CdC but I stopped using Stellarium about the time they switched to the new rendering engine as it pushed the BIOS clock forward a couple of seconds when you actually launch Stellarium. I don't know if they've fixed that. Ubuntu is heavier these days and you'll need a couple of Gb of RAM at least on x86 machines (4 Gigs on x64). Everyone blames Unity, but I actually prefer it to Gnome, although many in the Ubuntu community have jumped ship to Mint and other Ubuntu flavours because of it. A lot probably think the Russians didn't fire Shuttleworth far enough into space lol! KStars is a pretty decent Linux astronomy program and it's in most repo's.

southkstars_zpsgwam3yef.jpg

When it comes to tablets I prefer Android.

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Mak the Night

Mak the Night

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My 'indispensable kit' are my Rigel QuikFinder and Pocket Sky Atlas so I can find things, and a hoody-top to keep my head warm and get a bit of shielding from a couple of nuisance lights.

Oh no, don't tell me that about the Rigel ... I'll want one! :Envy:   http://www.firstlightoptics.com/finders/rigel-quikfinder-compact-reflex-sight.html

This TS Optics RDAC is virtually indispensable, but its LED reticule even on 'green' can be a bit bright for fainter objects or not so good conditions.

TS%20RDAC2_zpsphdpcfty.jpg

Pocket sky atlas is starting to sound good ... 'Dear Father Christmas ... '

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Yearofthegoat

Yearofthegoat

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I bought a Lenovo laptop last year preinstalled with Ubuntu 14.0.4 LTS (Trusty Tahr). CdC can pretty easily be added to it using the terminal as it isn't in the repo. UNIX is OK if you can get your head around it, I like it because of the security benefits, it's nice to be able to surf without an anti-virus program or consistently worry about buffer overflow infections. I run a Win 7 desktop with CdC but I stopped using Stellarium about the time they switched to the new rendering engine as it pushed the BIOS clock forward a couple of seconds when you actually launch Stellarium. I don't know if they've fixed that. Ubuntu is heavier these days and you'll need a couple of Gb of RAM at least on x86 machines (4 Gigs on x64). Everyone blames Unity, but I actually prefer it to Gnome, although many in the Ubuntu community have jumped ship to Mint and other Ubuntu flavours because of it. A lot probably think the Russians didn't fire Shuttleworth far enough into space lol! KStars is a pretty decent Linux astronomy program and it's in most repo's.

I did wonder about Ubuntu - I have an old Red Hat install disc somewhere, might try that!

Wasn't aware of the BIOS clock issue - hasn't been a problem yet due to just using Stellarium for planning rather than pointing, but am about to start doing that so will check it out. (OP - Apols for taking the thread OT a bit!)

Indispensible kit should also include membership of this forum; I would have been properly lost without all the help I've had.

So here's to all the helpful peeps on here - you rock!  :headbang2:

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Mak the Night

Mak the Night

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I did wonder about Ubuntu - I have an old Red Hat install disc somewhere, might try that!

Wasn't aware of the BIOS clock issue - hasn't been a problem yet due to just using Stellarium for planning rather than pointing, but am about to start doing that so will check it out. (OP - Apols for taking the thread OT a bit!)

Indispensible kit should also include membership of this forum; I would have been properly lost without all the help I've had.

So here's to all the helpful peeps on here - you rock!  :headbang2:

Windows BIOS clock isn't particularly accurate compared to UNIX platforms. You can set your watch by my Ubuntu laptops's clock. You can't say that with Windows ... even without Stellarium. lol

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Astro Imp

Astro Imp

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Windows BIOS clock isn't particularly accurate compared to UNIX platforms. You can set your watch by my Ubuntu laptops's clock. You can't say that with Windows ... even without Stellarium. lol

Yes you can, link your clock to a standard internet clock, simples.

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Mak the Night

Mak the Night

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Yes you can, link your clock to a standard internet clock, simples.

I thought it would be that simple(s). It's not quite. Supposedly, Windows synchronises every week at the same time but Win BIOS clocks are notoriously inaccurate and I believe there is software you can buy to fix them. The problem with them and Stellarium is that not only do they generally need synching when the computer is booted it needs to be re-synchronised after Stellarium is launched. And the problem with that is with Stellarium installed this doesn't always happen, even if the computer BIOS clock states otherwise. Don't take my word for it, check it against the clock on a UNIX computer/device (Mac/Linux/Android). 

timesynch_zpsyt9dv7io.jpg

I just checked my Win 7 desktop (x64 custom built) with my Laptop (Ubuntu) and Nexus tablet (Android) which were both correctly displaying the exact time to the second (GMT). The Win 7 desktop was out by at least 4 seconds until I synchronised it. 

Only when I had my entire hard drive wiped so Stellarium was completely removed from the registry was the desktop able to re-synch again properly. It is a known bug with Stellarium and Windows. It does not affect UNIX based systems. It almost certainly has something to do with the new rendering engine employed in Stellarium around three years ago IIRC, which was when the bug started to be noticed and reported.

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