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It will “work” but it won’t last for multiple nights, and depending on how much fast slewing you do around the sky vs finding one target and letting it track all night, it may run out of juice after 4 hours or so. If you plan to run anything else off this supply, like dew bands, lights, laptop, motorised focuser, CCD then you need to think again.
It will need recharging after every session, and I suspect you will discharge it quite deeply so over the coming year or two you may well notice it retains less and less charge.
If this is just to power the mount, then I would just get someone who is OK at electronics to knock up some polarity safe-terminals on the end of an old car battery (40-60 amp hours); most garages will let you have one for £5 as they just go to the scrap man for the same price. Take a multimeter and pick one which has a resting voltage of >12.5v if possible, but at least >12v. You’ll need a trickle charger like this (https://www.amazon.co.uk/12v-Motorcycle-Trickle-Charger-SWTBC2/dp/B006B3MI8W/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1503046011&sr=1-1-spell&keywords=charger+12v+streetwise). Stick it in a box, terminals on the outside. Job’s a good un, and all for under £40.
Deep cycle batteries would be better if you are using dew bands and other stuff, but an old car battery in ok condition will last many years if taken care of. I’ve only just recycled the ones we used at our observatory, and apparently, they were obtained 12 years ago.
James
Andrew, it is your username that is “home”. To everyone else you appear as Andrew Thomas, the only time another user will see “home” is if they try to send you an email, it will say “home” and not Andrew Thomas. You also have to remember if as this will be the name you log in with. I think you are stuck with it.
James
Andrew, make sure you are logged in to the website, and then go to this page: https://britastro.org/user/2825
Click “Edit account details”.
Have a look in there and see what you can change or not change.
James
David,
Making another animated GIF of your original image with the astrobin image, I can’t see any vanishing stars this time:
David,
I’ve made a quick animated GIF of the two images in your post (I’ve inverted the black and white in the AAVSO plot). There are lots of “differences”. I suspect some may be non-stellar objects. How accurate is the AAVSO chart, how are these charts constructed, and how old are they; might some also be proper motion of stars? Will be interesting to see what others say.
Listen to Mike talking about the Reverend, 2 hours 42 minutes in:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p056zgjp#play
James
Eric,
That would be great, thank you. I’ll drop you an email and I’ll work out how to get hold of one.
The power of kindness and of the BAA Forum 🙂
James
Peter, are you trying to upload images to your Member Page?
If you go to “my account”, then select “Edit account details” and scroll down and make sure the “Show profile” box is ticked. Click save at the bottom. Then go here:
https://britastro.org/member_profiles
And along the top should be an option “upload image”…
If that is not the case, let us know.
James
It seems there have been a few other observations of the event. I’ve not seen if anyone has identified any scars yet.
Paul,
Yes it’s exciting; cloudy in Nottingham and my C11 is at the telescope hospital anyway.
There is another forum thread about the supernova:
https://britastro.org/node/10251
Jeremy and Andy Wilson published a brief article on it also this morning:
https://britastro.org/node/10279
Looking forward to seeing your images of it.
James
Whilst looking for something else I came across this thread where Martin had uploaded a talk Patrick gave in 1997. It’s a lovely talk. Worth bumping up the list of forum topics to allow others to enjoy it [again].
James
Anthony,
Yes, we are sorry about this. We hope to have that talk in its entirety available in the next few days – it was a great talk so worth waiting for.
James Dawson
BAA Website Operations Team
