Archive for April, 2023

6 results.

Commissioning a new observatory computer

Apr30
by kevin on April 30, 2023 at 15:17 and modified on May 2, 2023. at 11:22
Posted In: astronomy

The existing laptop has been used as a telescope mount control and image capture for a few years. It has had its issues…
USB2 only (not USB3 which most astro cameras use these days), and it intermittently locked up for seconds at a time.
So a refurbished (from amazon) mini computer came along to replace it, at under $200 Can.
hp elitedesk 800 G3 mini  CoreI5@2.5GHz, 16GB DDR4, 256GB NVME, 480GB SSD, graphics intel HD 530 , HDMI 1920*1080
This had more RAM, faster solid state drives, and most importantly USB3

Observatory Configuration:
Serial-USB Adapter (Prolific PL-23xx)
Mount: Skywatcher AZ-EQ6GT
Telescope Vixen VC-200L
Camera: ZWO ASI290MC
Remote Focuser: PCFC JMI?
Skywatcher Synscsn Hand Controller

This is the list of software that needed to be installed and configured to get the observatory operational again.

prolific serial-usb adapter PX23XX v206, configured to com11 in my case
Ascom Platform v6.61 – file ascomplatform661.3673.exe
the file synscan_hand_controller_ascom_driver606262setup.exe dated 2021-07-26 has installed an ascom telescope chooser that says skywatcher! (this was the critical piece)
ZWOASI_camera driver v3.2
Firecapture v2.7.12 (imaging program)
skychart v4.2.1-4073 (primary sky chart and telescope controller)
stellarium 23.1 (backup sky chart and telescope controller)
Sharpcap v4.0.9545.0 (2023 march) (backup imaging program)

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How to move an observatory

Apr29
by kevin on April 29, 2023 at 11:37 and modified on April 29, 2023. at 11:39
Posted In: astronomy

Serenity II rolling off to the east

The Starlight Cascade Gardens and Observatories Serenity II observatory needed to move.
It has been in its current location for approximately two years. In that time some of the thoughts and assumptions of that time have shown to be wrong. In its initial 2 year ago design the 8′ deck became a 10′ deck in the hopes of rolling it further away from the mount.
Initially the roll off building was meant to go to the east, where it would be under the treeline in the line of sight from the telescope to the roof peak. In reality, measurements later showed that it was far taller than the treeline and did in fact often block planetary objects on the Ecliptic.
So the decision was made to move it.. more specifically to rotate it 90 degrees CCW to the north. That would clear up the eastern horizon.
Just before the day of the move, more though went into this, more measurements were done, and it was realized that moving 90 deg CCW would in fact cause a new problem… Polaris may be obstructed by the roof peak. The actual measurement from the primary mirror in its home/park/facing polaris position was around 40 degrees. This was close enough that all things considered.. was too close.
So at the last minute, the move was changed from 90 deg CCW to 45 deg CCW.
This would be the best of both worlds, opening up the eastern horizon and keeping the northern horizon and Polaris accessible.
The move occurred on Friday 2023 April 28 and took about 6 hours start to finish.
The process was basically to jack the deck and building up, support them on 2×8 wood and slide/push them around in place.
New holes were dug, gravel and sand laid down, then the two deck blocks of each foot was moved around into place.
The deck was lowered, locking into place in the deck blocks.
Levelling was performed using shims on the top of the deck block.
Done!
Many pain pills later and rest followed!
This is the new position of the observatory:

looking east

looking NE

looking north


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Aurora KP8 2023April24

Apr26
by kevin on April 26, 2023 at 10:42 and modified on April 26, 2023. at 10:46
Posted In: astronomy


The static image from Google Pixel 6 Nightsight feature… a 4 minute exposure stacked and aligned. below is the video that created this static image.

Of course it was cloudy… the biggest KP index is weeks. !
hmm confused with utc time .. this may have been sunday evening april 23/24
This is the allsky1 camera video from the overnight:

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Linux Fedora 37 to 38 upgrade

Apr21
by kevin on April 21, 2023 at 11:33
Posted In: tech


Linux Fedora 38 was released earlier this week and already we have upgraded three systems. So far so good, no issues with the inplace upgrades.
The command line sequence as root goes like this:

dnf upgrade –refresh
reboot
dnf install dnf-plugin-system-upgrade
dnf system-upgrade download –releasever=38
dnf system-upgrade reboot
dnf system-upgrade clean
dnf clean packages
dnf upgrade
Fedora 38 upgrade complete!
Each took less than 30 minutes.

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The google pixel 6 smartphone and nightsight

Apr10
by kevin on April 10, 2023 at 08:27
Posted In: astronomy

Wow!
For wide field astrophotography I do not believe I have seen anything better!

Attached is a 4 min exposure by nightsight, which stacks the moving bits only. Here you see looking West the Hyades, Mars, the Pleiades and Mercury down in the lower right below the powerlines.


This shows Sirius, Orion, the Hyades, Mars and the Pleiades.. another 4 minute run by the smartphone on a tripod with an adapter.


The last photo is looking East. I was hoping for Gegenshine? Goolefaloza? Ahhhh

gegenschein
gā′gən-shīn″
noun
A faint glowing spot or region in the sky, occasionally visible exactly opposite the position of the sun, consisting of sunlight scattered by interplanetary dust particles.

I think this may be it. The Kingston light pollution dome is normally centred on the tree on the far right of the image.

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Radiojove back in operation

Apr03
by kevin on April 3, 2023 at 10:34 and modified on April 3, 2023. at 10:35
Posted In: astronomy, tech

Our Radiojove telescope system went offline on 2023 March 21st.
We found the issue… a chewed through in two places audio cable running from the RJ receiver to the USB sound dongle inside the observatory.
We attempted to splice the cable but that attempt failed.
We ordered a replacement and install it on 2023 April 1st.. so about a 12 day outage.
As we went live, we appeared to be in the midst of an event… normally we do not receive the WWV 20.0MHz time signal from boulder colorado. We are in a skip zone. This day however we were in fact picking up faint and distorted time signals… the regular tick tick tick at 1 second intervals along with a voice every minute.
It lasted for approx 30 minutes and can be seen here:

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