Thoughts from Starlight Cascade

This is the housing and the mount for Allsky1, a raspberry pi and ZWO ASI camera based system. It has not been truly allsky since the last wideangle lens broke a year or two ago, so now it is more correctly a “partialsky camera system”.
So.. let’s turn it into more of an aurora cam and point it down closer to the northern horizon. Only we cannot because of the existing mounting system of a hose clamp to a piece of wood.
So.. it needs an Altitude-Azimuth mount… do we have any that would work? No..
ok can we build on.. how complicated could it be? 🙂
The answer is: not very hard at all.. these are the supplies… a 2″x3″, and two 5/4×6 cedar leftover pieces.

They were cut to size, approx 5.5″ for the cedar and approx 12″ for the 2×3.
This is the before image of the old mount:

It was removed, the 4×4 post was shortened enough to be able to adjust the new alt-az mount by hand, without the need for a ladder.
A carriage bolt was countersunk from the bottom and 4 long screws were countersunk from the top, to secure the new base.

The rotating section was then added on .. Just a wingnut is used to tighten the az axis. The 2×3 is attached with three long screws, countersunk from the bottom).
a 1/4″ hole was drilled in the side of the housing and a 1/4×20 x3″ bolt with washed was installed from the inside. The bolt head was covered with duct tape so it would not short out the raspberry pi.
another wingnut tightens the altitude axis and the 2×2 piece of wood goes back as a bird diverter landing spot (instead of the dome)

And a side view showing the network, 5vdc power supply cable and the 12vdc power supply cable going into the housing along with the fan hose going in the bottom.

Additionally the amount of sky facing dome has been lessened now that it is pointed downward, so the heat loss and dew issue should also be reduced.

The black cardboard mask has also been removed as it may have been impeding airflow.. and now that it is pointing north, the sun and the moon should rarely if ever light up the camera surface so that it reflects in the dome

A local horizon image was taken to be used as reference in helping to identify any local light pollution.
So.. here is the first midnight image showing the horizon, some local houses and their lights.
It also appears the lens focus was nudged a little too much and will be needing a refocus at the next opportunity.

And another run of Jupiter from this morning from about 04:30-05:30 nice.. no mosquitos! Lots of dew though but the dew heater strap around the corrector and the foam dew cap continue to work well.

This is the best 5% of 8K frames at 3ms each over 180 seconds. Io can be seen in the lower left and Callisto to the upper left of Jupiter. This is also using the older workflow without Cutout boxes.. because I forgot. When you have a refined process that you have used for months if not years, it is tough to change and to remember the change. So this is an 1800×2000 pixels that was drizzles/upscaled x1.5

So the first 6 runs were the old workflow, without cutout box and the one below is the best of 13 runs using the cutout box.
This shows only the moon Callisto to the left of Jupiter.

No GRS is seen. Transparency was poor especially with the near full moon in the sky, and seeing was poor to average.

Below is the animation of approx 40 minutes of runs

Another nice clear morning to get up and out around 04:00.. but did not actually start imaging until 04:40 or so.

BUT… the sun is coming up so much later I was able to do imaging runs clear through until 06:33..

so that is 33 runs of 3 minutes each with a 30 sec gap to allow the computer to catch up if needed.

In addition, I was using a feature of Firecapture that I have not used before.. a Cut Out box. and it worked well.

It reduced my chances of having Jupiter drift out of the FOV and ruin that run.

In the upper right is Io, moving away left to right.

On the bottom left is Europa moving in left to right. And another serendipitous event.. Europa shadow transit! Very nice.

The animation is large so will be posted on starlightcascade.ca a little later.

So far I am very happy with how this is working out. a dew heater is on the corrector plate and a dew cap is over that as well.

Greetings!
We have a 9.25″ full aperture baader solar film filter, in a neat aircore mount that just force fits inside the rim of the Celestron C9.25 Schmidt Cassegrain telescope.
After trying to use it for imaging, we discovered that is is so much overkill that we got no useable images. The full aperture brings in sooo much light that the zwo asi585mc camera was at its minimum exposure and everything was still overexposed.

So then we built another aircore layer with two 2″ subaperture holes to act as a mask.
Then we needed safe storage for it and built this aircore storage based on the one built for the 10″ Douglas dob 15-20 years ago.

Original 10″ Douglas Dob full aperture filter storage

closed with velcro

The C9.25 full aperture filter

The two 2″ subaperture mask

The C9.25 storage just neeed some sticky velcro

We will add another image of the solar filter itself.. the smaller inner bottom ring is what force fits into the end of the C9.25, then the film then the top ring, which overlaps the C9.25 end.

Again serendipity strikes… outside at 04:00 EDT to imaging Jupiter and continue to commission the Celestron 9.25 with a x1.5 barlow and low! Io is very close to Jupiter and its shadow was starting a transit of Jupiter.. right near the Great Red Spot!
Very nice. We imaged until it wsa too bright (dawn was approaching) and it was time for work. This is the best of about 10 runs.
Details and resolution are better than the previous 8″ optical tube as well.

This was the best 5% of 7200 frames with exposures of 3ms over a run of 60 seconds. Jupiter’s altitude was phenomenal.. 58 degrees high! The airmass was about 1.18 Jupiter’s diameter was 39 arcseconds