Allsky1pi operational

Feb16
by catz on February 16, 2020 at 11:05 and modified on February 19, 2020. at 16:20
Posted In: astronomy, weather

The new allsky1 version3 camera system. The camera is a ZWO ASI 120MC (not cooled) with a 2.1mm lens giving approx a 150 degree field of view.
The housing was upgraded from 9″ to 12″ tall as the space inside was a little tight.
The 110VAC was removed and replaced with two power lines, a 5VDC for the raspberry pi and asi120mc camera, and a variable 6-12VDC for the 10 ohm 10 watt heating element in the dome.


Mounted on an angle to the north as the lens is not horizon to horizon.. and we want to bias it towards the north. Mainly for aurora…

**Updated 2020 Feb 17
Turns out that North is Up requires the camera in an orientation where the usb port is up. So it was the wrong way around the last night or two and was rotated 180deg today.
Looks like frost is still forming.. the variable power adapter is quite old and was a little bit flaky when measuring before the install.. perhaps it is not working at all?
Still getting hot pixels… will wait a few days and try the dark frame again as well.

**Updated 2020 Feb 19
Not a bad night… mostly cloud but some clear skies and stars. All night runs about 18 seconds… may see about dropping the frame rate to extend that a little more.
No condensation or frost overnight. Outdoor temp was about -3C at 5am, so not much of a test for frost. Tonight is forecast to be -14C.. a better test.

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Allsky1pi aka allskypi

Feb14
by catz on February 14, 2020 at 10:10 and modified on February 14, 2020. at 10:20
Posted In: astronomy

This is part of the new allsky1pi camera system, specifically the ZWO ASI 120mc camera with its included wideangle lens, and a reaspberry pi model 3b. The camera is mounted on a wood piece to hold it up into the dome the the top cap of the housing.
The system was redesigned over the last month, removing 110VAC and having only a 5vdc powr supply for the Raspberry Pi and a variable 3-12vdc power supply for the 10ohm 10 watt resistor in the dome, to prevent condensation and to melt snow).
It was reinstalled on the evening of Wednesday 2002 February 12th and worked once the power was plugged in.

Over the last two nights we need to:
1) rotate the camera so that north is up again
2) increased the voltage on the heater. The last two days were set at 6volts. wattage = volts^2/resistance so that would be 6^2/10=36/10=3.6watts
If we put it up a notch to 9volts we should get
9^2/10=81/10=8.1 watts, or a little more than double. That should melt the snow and ice!
In the summer it can be turned back down again as the absolute temp is much less.


THe new housing, 4″ PVC by 12″ long (the old one was only 9″ long). The old housing was a little tight for space, what with cables, a pi, a pi power source, more cables, camera, etc. Not to mention 5 cm of water! Note for future projects: duct tape does not keep out water infiltration!
The 10ohm resistor is mounted on the top cap. The large centre hole is for the camera, the smaller holes were for air circulation, hoping that the heat of the raspberry pi alone would keep the dome clear.. it was not.
A ring of silicon went around the edge of the top cap, with the dome flange sitting on it. Less gaps for air leakage than in the past. Two screws with fabric washers keep the dome on the top cap.
The power connector is an automotive 12vdc two wire set with protected contacts to avoid shorting.

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weather underground? – dont count on it

Feb09
by catz on February 9, 2020 at 10:03 and modified on February 9, 2020. at 10:07
Posted In: weather


The last couple of years, on what used to be the premier free weather data aggregating server, has gone to hell. Lost accounts, lost configurations, deleting features then adding them in again. Wow.
Today we noted that our station is “offline” and has been since midngiht 2020 January 28. Like heck it is offline. The weatherpi system has been up for 54 days now, reporting to the Weather Underground and PWS and generating its own weewx pages.
doing a quick search reveals no customer response to many many customer notes:

2020-02-03 08:41:20
@DHTheWeatherNut @Eweather13 @VermonsterWx @crankywxguy @TimNBCBoston @EdValleeWx @WesternMEwx Sweet, thx!! Any issues with data getting lost due to issues with Wunderground network data loss like Mike @WesternMEwx has experienced?
2020-02-02 23:09:19
@Armato1 @wunderground What’s up with my weather station being offline for days now ? Seems many others are having issues as well.
2020-02-02 01:29:17
@loparite @wunderground why are the personal weather stations showing as offline when they’re not? It’s been radio silence from you guys as to what’s going on!
2020-02-01 07:53:55
@The_Weatherman2 @wunderground @wunderground Looks like it’s working on the normal app but not on WunderStation
2020-01-31 19:28:28
@The_Weatherman2 Hey @wunderground, 20+ weather stations I follow on WunderStation haven’t been reporting recently, and they all stopped around 4 pm Wednesday. I know it’s not a weather station error because my personal station is working fine. Is there a server error? Anyone know what’s up??

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opposition 2020

Jan20
by catz on January 20, 2020 at 10:45 and modified on January 20, 2020. at 11:36
Posted In: astronomy


This image shows Mars at 7.2 arcseconds in diameter and a declination of +0deg 52 min and an altitude of 22 deg, and using 3ms exposures.
Following up on the 20 tips below, in particular Tip #3:

mark these on whatever method you use to remind you of upcoming events.

* 2020 opposition dates

July 14 – Jupiter
July 20 – Saturn
September 11 Neptune
October 13 – Mars
October 31 – Uranus

Of note Mars will be much higher in altitude for the 2020 opposition vs the last 2018 one:
2018 July 27 Dec -25°.4
2020 October 13 Dec +5°.5
The three oppositions after that are even higher in declination!

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advice from down under

Jan20
by catz on January 20, 2020 at 10:42
Posted In: astronomy

60cm Venor dobsonian telescope

We were wondering through youtube this morning and came across some nice videos of an Australian astronomer Dylan O’Donnell.

This one was particularly nice:

We use some of the software he mentions are are almost in complete agreement with his 20 tips.
In summary the 20 tips are:

1) Get a Big F(*&^@#$ Telescope

2) Use barlows/Powermates

3) Wait for Opposition

4) Get High

5) Seeing

6) Firecapture and Autoalign

7) Get Lucky

8) Region of Interest

9) Use a monochrome camera

10) Autorun RGB sequences

11) Good initial levels

12) collimation

13) Focus on a star

14) Drizzle with autostakkert!2

15) Lucky Lucky Imaging

16) Luminance

17) Auto colour balance

18) topaz denoise

19) sharpening

20) advanced: derotation

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L&A Hort Met This Week

Jan16
by catz on January 16, 2020 at 09:48
Posted In: gardening

The Lennox and Addington Horticultural Society met this week, on Wednesday, 2020 January 15th 7pm at the Morning Star Mission, 59 Water St., Napanee.
15 members and guests were in attendance. The meeting adjourned at 8:15pm

The next meeting will be on Wednesday 2020 February 19th, 7:00pm, at A NEW LOCATION: St. Patricks Church, 179 West St, Napanee. Ample free parking across the street, meeting room in the new addition.

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Betelgeuse

Jan12
by catz on January 12, 2020 at 12:47 and modified on January 15, 2020. at 11:02
Posted In: astronomy


This is the red supergiant star Betelgeuse in the constellation of Orion.
The image on the left is from 2019 October 23 and the image on the right from 2019 December 28, 67 days apart.
Both are 15 second exposures but on different cameras, on the left a Canon Powershot ELPH 120 with ISO 800 and on the right a Canon 300D with ISO 1600.
Ideally one would want to use the same camera, the same object framing, same ISO and same exposures to compare, but even so, the difference in brightness stands out.
Betelgeuse has dimmed significantly in the last few months.
One can also go to the AAVSO website and generate a light curve, as I have done here below, showing brightness numbers from October 23 to Jan 12

Without numerical analysis, just looking at the curve shows a change from about magnitudes 0.5 to 1.5

You can go here to generate your own light curve to keep track of the star.

https://www.aavso.org/apps/webobs/results/?star=BETELGEUSE
or
https://www.aavso.org/LCGv2/

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Allskypi pathfinder project

Jan12
by catz on January 12, 2020 at 11:44
Posted In: astronomy

Our v2 allsky camera was an SBIG ST237A camera and was operational from 2006Dec-2018July. Ever since then we have been toying around with building another system out of existing spare parts and instead of a desktop, laptop or netbook data logging computer, a Raspberry Pi instead.
This pathfinder project was essentially an R&D project to get an operational camera system up and running, write it up and then see if others would like to go ahead and build some as well.
Luckily someone else thought of this first and posted the imeptus for us to follow at: https://www.instructables.com/id/Wireless-All-Sky-Camera/
This project uses a ZWO ASI120MC or equivalent camera, with included wide angle lens, housing and raspberry pi code.
The SCGO system has been mounted and operational since 2019 Dec 03 and work continues on commissioning it. This includes developing a dome heating system as it often condenses and or frosts up and accumulated snow does not normally melt off; programming to create archives, aiming of the housing to include more northern horizon for aurora capture; and more.
Total cost is expected to be under $300Can with most of that being the camera.
To date the system has been very robust with the raspberry pi having an uptime of 12 days since last restart.

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Asteroid Bennu – mapping

Dec23
by catz on December 23, 2019 at 14:37
Posted In: astronomy, space, tech


This image shows sample site Nightingale, OSIRIS-REx’s primary sample collection site on asteroid Bennu. The image is overlaid with a graphic of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft to illustrate the scale of the site. Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona.

Over the course of 91 days this year, we mapped this rock collection of rocks, for the end purpose of selecting a safe landing site for the spacecraft.
In the end, we also mapped (along with 14? others) the primary landing site “Nightingale”.

From https://www.psi.edu/news/bennusite
When NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission spacecraft arrived at the asteroid Bennu, it discovered more rocks and boulders than envisioned. Mapping all these potential hazards was necessary to select a location to collect a sample of the surface for return to Earth. This effort was the work of multiple teams around the globe. One of those teams consisted of more than 3,500 citizen scientists who used CosmoQuest’s Bennu Mappers project to mark rocks, measure boulders, and map craters. Together, they made more than 14 million annotations of features on a global map of Bennu. CosmoQuest is a project that is based at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz. (CosmoQuest.org).

These volunteers had no way of knowing in advance if the sites they studied and mapped would be the one selected as the final sampling site for the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Folks who saw images with fewer rocks could hope “This is it!” But first, they had to first mark all the photos with hundreds of rocks and dozens of boulders so mission scientists could choose the images critical to site selection.

“It is amazing that more than 3,500 citizen scientists participated in CosmoQuest’s project to map Bennu and help mission scientists find the best place for OSIRIS-REx to collect a sample,” said Pamela L. Gay, Senior Scientist and Senior Education and Communication Specialist at PSI. “This kind of a volunteer effort makes it easier to find safe places to sample and scientifically interesting places to explore.”

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The Expanse – Season 4

Dec16
by catz on December 16, 2019 at 09:05
Posted In: Science Fiction


Season 4 of The Expanse, a television series based on the works of James S. A. Corey (the pen name used by collaborators Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) released all 10 episodes last week and we made the time to watch it over two evenings.
Although we still have discussions about binge-watching vs weekly released, it was still great to watch the 10 episodes without forgetting plotlines, characters and who was in danger with what when.
Highly recommended. If you have read the book first, it helps set the tv season and keep the characters familiar.

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acurite weather station

Dec11
by catz on December 11, 2019 at 08:56 and modified on December 13, 2019. at 09:13
Posted In: tech, weather


It’s been over a week now since the new weather station (Acurite Pro model 06004) went operational in the back gardens. There have been signal dropouts and there has been cold temperatures (-20C), so we assumed it was the cold weather affecting the 4AA alkaline batteries powering the transmitter.
They were replaced 3 days ago with 4AA lithium batteries, rated for -40C.
And we still had signal dropouts!
So last night the receiver/display was moved from the front of the house to the rear of the house, closer to the transmitter, with fewer walls to penetrate, and with fewer sources of RFI between the transmitter and receiver.
The signal immediately jumped to 100% and has been solid for 12 hours now.

The issue is, we had 100% signal a *lot* when the station first went in.. and it got progressively worse and more intermittent over time.
Hopefully not a weather station failure in progress..
Only time will tell.

Updated 2019Dec13 – two days later the signal strength has remained strong and mostly consistent… just a few blips here and there of signal drop.

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Pi Projects update

Dec05
by catz on December 5, 2019 at 12:26 and modified on December 5, 2019. at 12:36
Posted In: tech

The weatherpi (3B model) data logger for the Acurite Pro Weather Station has been operational now for over 5 days straight, with the weather sensor out in the back vegetable garden. Everything is working fine and nicely correlates with the remote thermometer at the front of the house.

The oldest pi (model 1b) has failed at the simplest of tasks we wanted, running a 55″ display with web browser contents.. it just could not keep up. So it has been permanently retired.

The 2nd oldest (model 2b) is running the display and can even play music at the same time.

The next project in development is the wireless allsky camera, as seen here:
https://www.instructables.com/id/Wireless-All-Sky-Camera/

Installing raspbian “buster” with desktop went in fairly well on an 8GB microSD card, but because we would be storing imagery onboard for some unknown amount of time (we ran it for one night and found 2600+ images at 300K each totalling 770MB for the one night), we upgraded to a 16GB microSD card.

We hope to move images off the raspberry pi microSD card on a regular, automated process, but sometimes life happens and it does not work out as planned 🙂

This is a pathfinder project for the local astronomy club. Once operational, a detailed project plan will be written up with parts, supplies, sources, software and instructions… and then we will go from there.
The software install and initial configuration is complete.. now we turn our attention to the camera housing.

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