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Oh, I don’t know. I think I joined for the first time when I was 12.
Lead counterweights were quite common then. My 4″ Newtonian had one.
I’m really not sure when I grew up enough to assess risks accurately and mitigate them. Brain development is supposed to stop at about 24 isn’t it? 🙂
Yes, I have 2 weights and a 5kg – a conversion job.
The fun is that I want to use it with a 1980s C14, which is hefty and… its got a somewhat over engineered (15kg) cradle holding it. So, with focuser we’re looking at >35.5kg load. I know its on the edge for balance but certainly will be if I add something like a filter wheel and OAG. I have to say I’m tempted to stay with the current counterweights and extend the counterweight arm – though playing with molten lead again would be fun.
As for all this talk of molten metals: don’t try this at home kids.
Thanks to everyone for their suggestions. I have to say the leadwork looks really nice. Very neat – and probably even better after Hammerite. The sort of thing I would have rushed to do as a teenager. 🙂
Am kind of leaning toward the Olympic weights though. I wondered about stainless versions but they are more expensive – as you might expect. So something cast iron seems the best bet with an extra coating of paint and possibly one of these (see below) araldited to the inside to avoid it shaking about + velcro as Robin suggested.
A shame that no astro engineering company offers lathed rings to allow the conversion of weights for Paramounts and other makes.
My options appear to be:
1, additional counterweights – £400 for 9kg
2, replace the cradle for one lighter (its very robust) – $560
3, modify stainless steel 10kg Olympic weights – ~£300
4, extension shaft for counterweight arm/rod – £135I know which one I’m gravitating toward…
Yeah, I noticed someone on Cloudy Nights took that approach. But its 50 years since I messed about with molten lead. Will give that some thought.
I saw a Software Bisque weight on line at £401. Eek!
Tempted to get a weightlifting weight (2″ bore) and try to put a mild steel collar of some sort in that – even I could run one up on a lathe.
I love the 112 authors not listed. How many words is that per author?
Is this going to happen whenever the LSST consortium publish?
I would say that, ideally a flat is needed for lunar and planetary observing.
Yes, stacking will help to hide any dust doughnuts present and – depending on how the stacking is done – even vignetting, but the final result will normally be better if flatfielding is done.
And don’t forget that flat frames need their own darks, even with CMOS sensors – as bias offsets may be present in the image.
So, if you give ASTAP an ephemeris created by (say) JPL Horizons it align multiple images to keep the comet images stacked? Sounds nice.
I see it runs under Windows and Linux – under Linux it could use Astrometry.net for platesolving. How is it doing it under Windows – using the comet’s predicted RA/Dec as the centre to search for star patterns? Plus possibly a hint at sensor pixels size and system focal length?
How do you find it to use?
I contacted Fabio at AstroArt…
“Thank you for your email. I discovered it last night, the hosting provider has problems. I hope they will fix it ASAP.
If you need to download something, the mirror web site is available at: https://www.msbsoftware.it/astroart/ ”So back on line soon one assumes.
Astroart allows you to input its speed of motion and position angle of the target to provide offsets…
I imagine others use Astrometrica.
I know nothing about solar imaging but is it just me or is there less detail at the 5 o’clock position compared to the 11 o’clock? If so, could that be indicative of tilt?
I got curious to see what BAA DSS/VSS members had done on variable nebulae. Some are full papers and some are notes…
Apologies to anyone whose paper I have missed….
2005 Hind’s Variable Nebula – Hewitt
2012 PV Cephei and Gyulbudaghian’s Variable Nebula – Boyd
2015 Five Year light Curve of the Herbig Haro Ae Star PV Cephei – Boyd
2019 The Many Faces of Gyulbudaghian’s Nebula – Privett et al
2020 Update on PV Cephei and Gyulbudaghian’s Nebula – Boyd
2020 Brief Further Update on PV Cephei – Boyd
2022 Observations of V347 Aur and its associated reflection neb – Sargent
2022 R CrA and cyclic variations in NGC6729 – Evans/Privett
2023 Brightness variations in R CRA and NGC6729 – Privett/Evans
2024 Variable Nebula Report – Sargent/PrivettMy plan is to write a paper on 347 Aur this summer and from Richard Sargent’s brief at the DSS meeting, it looks like he is working on one about Hind’s variable nebula – so thats probably 2 papers for the BAAJ in 2026.
Its not a great publication rate but it is respectable I think.
Richard and Callum can speak to this far better than me but, I for one don’t post all my VN images on the Gallery – as most users are certainly not as interested as I am.
For the record, in that period, I observed:
PV Cep+Gyul – 9 times
V347 Aur – 16 times (it underwent a flare during the nice weather)
Borisov’s – once
Hinds – 3 times – deeply several others shallow
McNeil’s – 4 times
Thommes – none
NGC1333 – noneAnd I’m only one observer, so I suspect more is going on than is apparent.
When it comes time to write an annual summary of whats going on, then I’m sure Richard knows he can rely on most active observers to supply copies of their images.
Richard,
Will have a look at the gallery and see if I have any images older that those I have already placed on it. 3 at least I suspect, probably going back to mid 90s. Of course, people didn’t usually stack more than 20 or 30 images then (I had to write my own code to do it) – and Pentiums weren’t exactly nippy. Bill Gates declaration that “640kB should be enough for anyone” was already a joke.
Will look this evening.
Grant
EDIT: 1997, 2007, 2017, 2018,2019 now in the gallery…
I would also add in the period when the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland saw aircraft grounded too – that saw an unusually long run of blue skies too.
It might take some of the fun out of the discussion for the journalist, but by looking at VIIRs imagery for London over (say) the last 10 years you should be able to see what has happened in recent years as the measured upwelling radiance would need to be constant before you could safely attribute more stars to NO2 levels and the ULEZ.
Something like…
The website now actually offers the option for trend analysis on the light pollution levels. Impressive how dark some of the Motorways have become.
Perhaps upwelling blue light is scattered more strongly and never reaches space and so gives a false impression.
By comparison my home location has seen a small rise in light pollution as new house builds seem occupied by people afraid of the dark (despite every phone having a torch inbuilt) – even out here in the boonies where a crime is a major event!
Half decent display here near Salisbury at just after 20:00 UT. Didn’t last long though.
https://britastro.org/observations/observation.php?id=20250416_222637_de6f50341ab31fe8EDIT: I forgot to change the time on my camera. This should read “after 21:00”.
Hmm. I shall have a look at that. Python is very easy so its an attractive option. Wonder if I should stick with ASCOM rather than Alpaca for simplicity but worried anything I do might become redundant in a few years if they are moving away from COM.
Oh well, no excuse then but to use github for the first time and try Visual Studio – which I downloaded years ago and got rid of fairly quickly after I tried to convert a GUI intensive VB6 program to .NET. It wasn’t a happy experience.
Truth be told, a large chunk of my last 10 years has been spent developing software for image processing pretty much in a team of 1. I wrote IDL (or later Python) and its run from command line. My understanding of the ASCOM/Alpaca/Github universe is wafer thin… 🙂
Looks like one of my old laptops is about to be resurrected for this. Be warned, there may be immoderate language…
Does anyone know if theres a latency issue with using Python rather than another language?
