Life in the country – supersidpiant
Just one little ant… just one little ant was seen on the supersidpi unit, out in the observatory. A closer look showed that he had friends.. lots of friends… We…
Jupiter 2021 December 22
The workflow process is slowly changing over time. Now I tend to do a full view overexposed capture to establish orientation of the moons of Jupiter, to math it up…
Jupiter 2021Dec03
Working through the troubleshooting still. Much hardness in troubleshooting as seeing is 1=DISGUSTING. uninstalled firecapture completely. reinstalled from scratch into new location. Always have the debayer option ON. That seems…
collimate! collimate! collimate!
Telescope optics tend to be a finicky and complex issue at times. Mirrors tend to be finished down to fractions of a wavelength of light across the mirror surface to…
Jupiter 2021Nov19
After doing the barlow test, I moved ahead to try Jupiter out again… with the max x3 barlow (which turned out to have dust spots, so it too is now…
Telescope barlow focuser relationship
I did a short experiment last night with barlows and focussing distances. The results baffle me so I am going to have to try it again. As a general rule…
Partial Lunar Eclipse 2021 Nov 19
The first lunar eclipse in some time, partial or total. Of course the clouds came for the event! Up at 02:00 Local, 03:00 local, 04:00 local.. cloud Finally around 04:30…
Minor Planet (10062) Kimhay
Congratulations! (10062) Kimhay = 1988 RV4 = 1997 UY24 Discovered at La Silla on 1988-09-01 by H. Debehogne. (10062) Kimhay Kimberley Dawn Hay (b. 1959) is an enthusiastic observer, sunspot…
Allsky1pi camera system software upgrade
The allskypi camera upgrade from 0.6 to 0.8 took about 10 minutes and the new software is *amazeballs* A new web GUI interface for settings which has more info about…
10 years of Radio Jove
It’s been over 10 years actually (2011 April) since we assembled out RadioJove radio receiver, built the dual dipole antenna, and have been recording both Jupiter and Solar radio events.…
Jupiter 2021Oct01
This was the last images of the Jupiter imaging test from Friday night, after 2000 EDT and into the next day UTC. So.. the details… The ZWO ASI290MC camera has…
Jupiter 20210918
Pretty poor out last night for planetary… almost full moon, very close to Jupiter. Seeing poor, transparency poor. This image was the best, the last of the evening. 180 second…
Adventures in Commissioning an observatory
I too spent a few hours last evening/night. Mark had kindly repaired the JMI remote motofocus USB interface and it worked great! Having numbers to record for focusing with no…
SCGO Serenity Observatory Renovation 2021-Part2 – Deck
The plan was to build a raised deck, high enough up for very good ventilation and high enough not to be shelter for critters. Crushed gravel went in first, followed…
SCGO Serenity Observatory Renovation 2021-Part1 – Pier
We had have piers made from 2×6 wood in a box format, anchored in concrete and filled with sand. They rotted in about 10 years and were never really stable!…