PupCam

Another quick fertle with Saturn from earlier in the month. Well at least you can guess what it is so that's something I suppose. I managed to get a version of another capture program (FireCapture) running on the old Windows 7 astronomy laptop and get it to recognise my astrocamera. I will give that a try next time we have a half decent night sky. It will make an interesting comparison with Sharpcap which is the program I've been using to date. Unfortunately Saturn is pretty much done for the time being as it rises ~10:00am and sets at ~8pm so no chance of copping that again at the moment. Unfortunately its rings are on the decline as well for the next few months (years?) as it slowly tilts so the very thin rings are edge on to us. Still, patience is a virtue. Night All

Evening All! Today's excitement has mainly been watching the electricity board men replacing the pole that carries the mains cable for a good part of the road that resides outside Puppers Towers. It was all done with a double post-hole spade, the crane with a bit of chain on the end of the arm, a long pokey stick and a very long lever with chain on the end (think giant oil filter removal wrench). They didn't quite get the hole deep enough first time round and had to go another foot down (~6' in total) so had to lift the pole out and do more digging. The fact the water table is only about 24" down meant the hole filled up almost as quickly as the mud was removed! Still they got there in the end and no property or power lines were damaged in the process. Looking forward to the power blackout on Thursday (Not!) when they transfer the power lines from the old poles to the new poles. Power scheduled to be off from 8:00am until 4:00pm IIRC. On the cards for tomorrow is a trip "Up the Smoke" to collect some medication. For reasons best known to the NHS and completely unknown to the patient the GP is unable to prescribe one of my many medicines and I can only collect it from the hospital. If I park the car in the station that's getting on for £30 in total for the pleasure of the collection. It's ironic that on my return I will be able to drop into the GP's and collect the other 9 or 10 medications that I normally have. I'm sure there's some logic ...... let's just hope the good folk of ASLEF are putting on some form of service tomorrow even if it isn't going to be the full Monty. TTFN

Afternoon All Which isn't surprising given the vast number of Acts on the statute. Whilst the fundamental intent of ignorance of the law is no defence is understood (and it would clearly be impossible to train every citizen on every Act) really for laws that do not follow common sense and common decency (whatever they actually are) it's all a bit one sided really and could be taking the Micky if someone were prosecuted under some archaic and bizarre but never repealed act e.g. "For treading on the cracks in the pavement after twilight whilst carrying a brace of ferrets" or whatever. One hopes that folk are no longer subjected to such ridiculousness although I suspect that on some occasions that might be a forlorn hope! Because she may well be obliged to. Can't say I'd relish tucking into a pie that include gravy avec bird guano. Birds usually find the need to minimise take-off weight immediately prior to take-off. Certainly far more attractive than Fanny Craddock! ION We've now returned from a few days away well on the way although not "Over the Border" to the Distant (Signal) West (© Gwiwer) and very nice it was too. We returned via the country route from the east of Swindon but had to avoid the roadworks at the Botley Interchange. We saw quite a bit of Oxfordshire we'd not encountered before including Witney. It seems that Oxfordshire in general and Witney in particular is trying to emulate Wales ..... Some would say FFS whilst I might be a little more restrained but I have the same sentiments. Today has been very laid back. I'm feeling extremely tired and apart from sorting out a couple of medical appointments and some internet surfing nothing has been done. If I can stay awake I might have another play with some of the most recent astronomy data. But then again I might not. TTFN

Morning All Puppers reporting for duty. Sorry, bit low profile for a bit, nothing sinister in this case just a good deal of unspecified pottering with Junior Puppers. Thanks to Baz and others for the concern but in this case everything is good. Like Baz, I hope the same can be said for the other MIA. I’ve been skimming and rating the occasional post. I was going to quote Flávio’s post but it’s too difficult on my phone. Suffice to say Here! Here! to his statement in bold. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve uttered the same sentiments. These Councils that think the opposite must be right up one end of the intelligence Bell curve. I’ll leave you to work out which end. And on that note I say TTFNQ

Test message sent ….

Morning All. You'll find me a very sleepy Puppers today. A little bit late going to bed last night but when I got there I just couldn't get to sleep. 12:00, 12:30, 1:00, 1:30, 2:00 ......... Too much staring at PC monitors tarting around with planets I expect. When I did finally nod of the usual culprits were around to make sure many hours were not wasted by continuous sleeping! I fancy an eyelid inspection will be forthcoming shortly. Jolly windy here last night and slightly moist. Having checked out the St Ives webcam last night whilst doing my BP I thought @Gwiwer was being let off lightly. Mind you it looked like there were some brave souls out fishing in small boats as they do some times. Rather them than me! Some remedial action has been necessary this morning. The removable fence panel at the end of the garden had partially removed itself by ripping the supporting bracket from the concrete fence post. It pivoted round the other end and came to a halt up against my trailer. Temporary repairs have been effected but the whole panel and its mountings will require replacement when the better weather comes and I CBA. The vertical bird feeder-cum-honeysuckle support had adopted a jaunty angle of ~60° by means of opening up the soggy muddy hole in the ground in which it lives. Again a temporary repair has been effected by returning it to the vertical and filling the resulting hole alongside with 1/2 a brick wedged in position. Again, more permanent repairs will be required in due course. Following yesterday's RD thrash, both my leather motorcycle trousers and motorcycle boots have been returned to black from the the muddy brown colour which they were on my return. Now, what to do next? TTFN

Well I had a go ........ As the Optician would say; "better or worse?" I think it's more likely to suggest that both our cars are not garaged and indicates how infrequently we clean them 🤣 Night All!

Windy Night All! Those that have met me will recall there's not a great deal of difference in size between a miniature PupCam and the full size version 🤣 But I like the idea Chimpy! Well, how can I best put this? 🤔 Probably best just to keep schtum and hope that the Wisteria Police walk on by (Cue ...... Dionne Warwick) Which reminds me . We've been advised by UK Power Networks that they are going to be removing the supply to our area for the day in a couple of weeks time. Something about having to replace the poles and/or mains cables that distribute the supply to most of the properties along the road. Time to get the camping stove out then and the heating is gas powered so that'll be OK ......... Doh! But the pump isn't. Alright then, lets have a real fire for once. Ah, no chimney! Down to the Community "Warm Hub" for us pensioners then on the day? On second thoughts, I think the pub sounds more appealing 🤣 ION A short thrash was thrashed this morning on the recently polished RD. It was much warmer out today and no ice which was excellent. Unfortunately all the roads were damp and muddy. The "damp and muddy" was converted into a spray which then covered the RD. This afternoon has been spent cleaning the RD followed by an extensive external clean of the Mondog followed by a slightly more superficial external clean of the Little Red Driving Box (Trade Marks acknowledged). The Mondog has changed back to silver instead of the muddy, silver green that it has been for some time. The natural green tint was provided by moss. Whoops. Now to look at some of the videos from the other evening's astronomical amusement. TTFN

That's good. Perhaps I should just buy a camera and a decent lens? 🤣

Evening All There was a bakers in Boxmoor (Hemel Hempstead) who delivered their products with a horse drawn van until quite late, they may even have made it into this century doing so but I can't remember exactly. I suspect it's longevity was as John suggests for a combination of practical and advertising purposes. And not to forget there's still a surprising number of gas lamps to this day in London I would have thought they would be obliged to give the owner the opportunity to remove personal effects from such a vehicle before dispatching it to the crusher. ION Part of yesterday was spent disassembling as much of the falling down pergola as the Wisteria would allow. Actually it appears to be mostly self-supporting so the next stage is to part build the new one, either transfer the weight to the new bits or provide temporary supports, remove the remainder of the old one and then finally finish the new one. One or two more branches may have to be sacrificed as they partially cross some of the Metpost sockets which will prevent the new posts from going in vertically. A clear evening last night so I did some astronomy, Jupiter and the moon being the targets yet again. Unfortunately the "Seeing"* wasn't very good so I'll not get much from the lunar stuff. * The stability of the atmosphere leading to continuously distorted imagery. Jupiter worked OK though and I can probably squeeze a little bit more out of the data. This morning I was invited out on a run over to Pure Triumph at Woburn. My mates are braver than I am and it was much too cold first thing. It's warmed up throughout the day though, the frost on the ground has all gone and most of the ice in the birdbath has melted so it looks like a thrash tomorrow morning will be in order. That's about it for now. Night All

Further Mount Mods The bearings on the EQ2 mount aren't up to much (like any of it in reality) and after a bit of use the Right Ascension axis was particularly bad which of course is a bit of a problem as that's the axis that tracks. I disassembled it and measured it up and found I had a couple of ball races that would fit nicely in and then turned up a sleeve to match the original shaft to the bearings. This shaft had also had a hole bored in the end of it to match the shaft diameter of a an optical shaft encoder (more on that later). The bearings were held in place in the housing using Loctite Engineering Adhesive and the whole lot re-assembled. Overall, the head is still closer to a Sow's Ear rather than a Silk Purse but "Every Little Helps" as they say. Red Spot Finder Mount These budget scopes tend to come with a Red Spot Finder (RSF) rather than a proper, optical Finder Scope (either of which are essential if you going to find what you are looking for in the eyepiece) because, yes you've guessed it they are much cheaper . For those that don't know; the RSF is like a crude head-up display where a little red light dot from an LED is projected onto a small clear screen and once it has been set up (i.e collimated with the telescope's axis) allows you to position the red dot on the object of interest and with a bit of luck the object of interest should then appear in the eyepiece. Well, that's the theory! It seems they take a bit of getting used to, their use is not helped by the close proximity of the viewing window to the telescopes tube and it can be quite awkward getting in just the right position to see the dot. A friend kindly 3D printed a taller mounting bracket to get it further from the tube which worked well but ....... ... after getting rather warm one sunny day the nice flat flange turned into a banana. The bent flange was cut from the upper and lower "lumpy bits" which were slotted to accept a new flange cut from sheet 3mm aluminium. The whole thing was then epoxied together and works well. As mentioned elsewhere, the new flange later provided a handy mounting point for electronics box for the focuser. The Astronomy Gadget Early on when I was trying to understand (and failing for quite a long while) how to use an objects RA & DEC coordinates to find them in the sky using the setting circles on the mount. Perhaps I was being a bit dense (more than likely) but I hadn't got to grips with the relationship between RA and Hour Angle (the relationship of a specific RA value (e.g. the coordinate of a celestial object) to "time now" where you happen to be. Whilst the RA of an object doesn't change (to all intents and purposes) it's Hour Angle is constantly changing as the earth rotates. This all seemed very complicated (well actually it is quite complicated) so I decided to build an Hour Angle calculator (and for those of you who know me you won't be surprised to find it's Arduino based). The idea being you enter the RA of your chosen object and knowing it's time and position very accurately (it uses a GPS module) it tells you what the Hour Angle is and thus where to point your scope. The experienced astronomers amongst us will have instantly spotted the problem that the setting circles on cheap telescopes are mere ornaments; they lack the necessary accuracy probably by a couple of orders of magnitude and coupled with all those sloppy bearings, poor clutches/locks mean that you are not going to be onto a winner. When I'd appreciated that little gem I hit upon the idea of using a couple of optical shaft encoders These are available quite reasonably (~£20 a piece) and would provide a resolution down to ~0.3 degrees. OK, still not really good enough but much, much closer and would get you somewhere near so you could start hunting. So the Hour Angle calculator morphed into the Astronomy gadget which has a couple of displays showing where the scope was actually pointing and where it should be pointing for the OoI. This was quite a project and try as I might I couldn't do all that was necessary to keep track in real-time of two shaft encoder positions and do all the other stuff (calculating Sidereal time, HA, drive the display etc etc) so it ended up with one Arduino (a UNO IIRC) as the main processor and two Arduino Nanos, one to keep track of RA encoder movement and the other keeping track of the DEC axis using a full compliment of interrupts. As the encoders provide a relative rather than absolute position you cannot afford to lose track of a single step (~0.3°) - you'll never get it back! As I mentioned, it's quite well packed in the box with the 3 Arduinos, the display, the rotary encoder for the control knob, the GPS module and some other little interface modules. I thought I had photographs of the internals but they seem to have gone walkabouts for now. At about the same time that all this was evolving I was taking my first steps with astrophotography using my son's Canon camera as seen earlier. It very soon became apparent to this novice that you don't just take one photograph you need to take loads of photographs. You also don't want to touch the telescope when doing so! I found out that his camera has an IR remote trigger. Thanks to the wonders of the internet I found out the IR pulse sequence to trigger a Canon camera. An IR LED and yet more code was added to the Astronomy Gadget to provide an intervalometer function to trigger the camera. Sure you can buy such a device ready made but where is the fun in that? The LED is mounted in a bit of ali tube with a rare earth magnet set in the end so you can just stick it the telescope tube somewhere where the camera sensor can see it. The software enables you to set the number of exposures, length of and the gap between exposures and also the mode (bulb or triggered). It worked very well, the only thing to watch out for was to make sure that the time taken for the camera to store each image was less than the set gap between exposures! Here is (almost) the end result Funny enough, the gadget has fallen into temporary disuse. I still haven't mounted the encoders on the mount yet so the pointing system is not yet operational and of course now I've started using the astro-camera I don't need the intervalometer. Oh well, never mind. I think that just leaves the "Angle of Dangle" device (actually the polar axis angle indicator) which I'll briefly describe next time and then I'll mention the software I've found, used, rave over, given up on, as appropriate. Alan

Crayford Focuser Going back to the Crayford Focuser briefly. This little clip of the half-built focuser illustrates the basic principle of operation. As you can see, its actually very simple. Unlike a Rack and Pinion version, as there are no gears there can be no backlash just at the critical point. The focuser was hewn pretty much completely out of solid aluminium, machining the curved base was a slow job as there was a lot of material to remove but in deference to my venerable old Myford I only took very small cuts! It's rather chunky and consequently heavy so introduces some scope balancing problems. If I were making it again I'd do a Colin Chapman (Lotus cars) and try and "Add lightness" wherever possible. The addition of the remote, electric drive was well worth it as it is impossible not to jog the telescope (budget mount don't forget) when doing it manually. It also has the particularly useful characteristic of being able to focus the scope whilst sitting indoors in the warm 😀 These are the little 4 channel RF remote control modules I've used for both the focuser and the RA drive. Can you believe it? Five pairs for £10 !!!!! They have a multitude of uses including many on a model railway! Dead easy to use if a little awkward to programme the mode and they work brilliantly The electronics for the controller (Arduino Nano, the remote Rx, the stepper motor driver and four rechargeable AAA batteries) live in a little plastic box that has been screwed to the side of the Red Spot finder bracket. Well it was handy and close by the focuser. Battery powered means no trailing wire connected to the scope which is good, but the batteries don't seem to last that long meaning focusing stops when the batteries are flat, which is bad! There's already a cable going to the scope for the camera (and another if I venture into using the camera's guide output) so perhaps rather than banishing cables to the scope I should just concentrate on good cable management? Platform The next improvement to my budget priced scope is an extremely simple one. A large flat ali plate sandwiched between the tripod and the mount. This provides a platform to rest my phone on when using a suitable Spirit Level App to set the head level. I quickly found out the tiny little, stick on, bubble levels are as much use in this application as a chocolate fireguard. The plate really needs a little guide rail adding to positively set the phone to the telescope's bearing rather than just "Eyeballing" it but that's still on the To Do list. I've recently found a useful little phone App; "NOAA Magnetic Field Calculator" The primary purpose is to calculate the local magnetic declination but it includes a handy combined Compass and Spirit Level display that works well* with the phone sitting on the platform. I haven't yet been able to set the telescope bearing accurately enough to magnetic north let alone compensate for the magnetic / true North error! * Well, to be honest the compass bit only works "Wellish" because the magnetometers in the phone can be affected by the big lumps of steel in the mount. Sloppy Yoke The Sloppy Yoke on my budget priced scope is not conducive to accurate Polar Alignment because as you tighten the locking screw it moves the axis in both azimuth and elevation. Not a lot but it doesn't have to be a lot. I was thinking about boring the yoke out and fitting two hunky ball races and a suitably chunky shaft. So far I've gone with the much simpler interim solution of turning aluminium bushes to fit in the yoke to take up the slack. It's a big improvement but really needs the "Proper" solution. Maybe one day if I don't suddenly decide to splash out and buy a complete new, much better scope and mount! More another day ...... Alan

Good luck for the pre-op and even more so for the procedure Dave. Well yes that's true to a point ...... BUT If I'd paid, say, £40K+ for a vehicle that is going to save the planet (it's not by the way) and it fell over "because it got a bit cold" then I'd be well and truly miffed and quite rightly so. I'd be even more miffed if later it then spontaneously * combusted because the batteries had in effect been mistreated e.g. when they got "a bit cold" / were charged when they were "too cold" / the rate of change of battery temperature was out of spec because it had just been thrashed down the motorway and then got "a bit cold quite quickly" or any other of a myriad of justifications. * Note I specifically included the word spontaneously. Please don't re-ignite (pun intended) the old "discussion" about "Ah yes but petrol cars burn too" Yes they do but generally only when some other fault has created a fire in the first place igniting the fuel in which case the upholstery also becomes a fuel, the carpets also become a fuel, the rubber tyres also become a fuel etc. Just like all of the other things listed, the real fuel although volatile does not generally burst into flames of its own accord. Personally I'm quite happy to let the early-adopters take the smack on the chin (primarily in the wallet department) to subsidise this development. I'm very glad that there are folk around who can just shrug the shoulders when their very expensive new toy packs up and just say "Oh well, not to worry, it's new technology you know, you have to expect these things. I'll get the bus home." but I certainly couldn't afford to do so. Testing technology and techniques have moved on considerably since anti-freeze and decent cooling systems came into being. If so many customer vehicles are failing when operating in the environment they are designed (or should have been designed) to operate in then clearly their development environmental testing was, at best, inadequate. In the aerospace industry we have been cooking, soaking, freezing, vibrating, statically and dynamically loading, "shouting at" (using high intensity sound to excite structures and systems) and a whole host of other test methods for many decades (including throwing dead chickens at them but that's probably not appropriate in this case). And when we weren't using the facilities for our own products we often used to use them to test products on behalf of ............ the automotive industry. ION I've spoken to Bear today. He's still struggling but once again thanks everyone for the good wishes that have been passed on. I note Jupiter and the moon are best buddies this evening. I should have got the gear out but just haven't got the energy. Never mind. Night All!

I spotted how close they are this evening! It's very clear this evening, I should lug the kit out and have another crack but I'm just too tired. Never mind. Nice to see some interest in astronomy here though! 😀

Afternoon All And there was me thinking you'd gone all 1980s! Looks like a very nice bit of kit! Having dabbled in photography back in the '80s with a reasonably SLR I've toyed with the idea of moving properly into the digital age but the phone does most of what I need these days so I've resisted the temptation. Very nice! Astrocooker is a new one on me. I feel some research coming on. That's clearly not taken from Luton ....... 🤣 ION Two hours sleep yesterday afternoon and 10 hours (ignoring the usual interruptions) overnight and I feel better for it although I was still a bit "heady" this morning. Whether it was the after effects of yesterdays big (for me) migraine (which usually are over and done with quickly and only effect my vision) or something else I don't know. I'll have to see how I go. A walk was walked over the frosty but not snow covered fields to the bakery in the next village for some crusty bread. Just short of a 3 mile round trip i can confirm it's nippy in Puppershire but I'm very pleased to say nowhere near as nippy as up Norf! I posted a summary of astronomy stuff over here which I'll expand on later. I'm surprised there doesn't seem to have been much astronomy stuff posted on a dedicated thread over the years. ERs seems to have the majority of it! I've got those videos of Jupiter from the other evening to play around with and see if I can make anything out of them this afternoon. Oh yes I noticed at 2:30am this morning that Orion was very nicely placed over the back garden and looking good when I looked out. Funny enough I then went straight back to bed which seemed much more inviting than getting dressed, getting all the kit out and standing around in the sub-zero temperatures! TTFN

Did you ever take the plunge? If so what did you get and how are you getting on? Are you doing pure visual or have you put a toe in the complicated, murky waters of astrophotography with the new kit? About 2 years ago, with an initial budget just over 10% of yours I started as a complete beginner, knowing absolutely nothing, and as a consequence my basic apparatus is very cheap and cheerful - with all that entails. I bought a Skywatcher 130 with equatorial mount including a single axis (RA) mount. This choice was more by luck than judgement as I didn't appreciate the benefit of such a mount over a basic Azimuth & Elevation version at the time or indeed the necessity for it for astrophotography. Over the recent months I've posted quite a lot about my astronomical trials and tribulations over on Early Risers. @Darlington_Shed requested some details of my astro-camera so I thought it might be an idea to come over onto this thread for a bit more nitty gritty. I believe many experts suggest you should not attempt astro until you have established a degree of visual skill and suggest waiting for 2 or 3 years. I have a lot of patience but not for that! For my first attempts at astrophotography I made an adapter for my son's mirror-less Canon camera body. It's a commercial adapter modified to shorten it by removing the eyepiece mounting and replace it with a sleeve that goes over the eyepiece tube. This enables focus to be achieved without the aid of a Barlow lens (and hence the inherent magnification). It seemed to work and I had a degree of success with this for both lunar and deep sky images. Shortly afterwards some of the plastic teeth fell off of the rack for the sloppy plastic focuser. I became aware of the much improved "Crayford Focuser" design and although you can buy such devices I had a crack at making one. Here you can see it in place complete with the camera adapter and the manual focus knob. It's basically an Ali tube sitting in a Vee of four ball races to allow fore & aft movement held in position and driven by a round, sprung loaded rod bearing down and gripping the top of the focus tube. Last year I bought a dedicated astro-camera and despite all of my recent experience with budget equipment I bought a budget colour camera. It was about £130, which is about as cheap as you can get when astro-cameras typically cost £300+ and many are in 4 figures). The camera is the AltairAstro GPCAM2 Colour camera and for a tiny, budget camera it sort of works OK for lunar, planetary and deep sky work but much more of a challenge with deep sky because it's relatively insensitive so seeing what your photographing is much more of a challenge! I've updated the Crayford to a stepper motor drive with an RF remote control so that focus can be achieved without touching the scope - a very big plus point that! It uses a pair of very cheap 4 channel On/Off RF modules and an Arduino providing the drive signals to the little stepper motor drive board. At the same time I've added a similar RF remote to the RA control box that came with scope. In this case the RF module uses a transistor across the back of each button to simulate button presses. I think Tx/Rx modules were about £4 a pair and the stepper motor and driver board were equally as cheap. Here's the updated Crayford with the dinky little GPCAM2 in this case in use with a reasonable 3X Barlow. The Barlow cost about £100 and is far better than the very cheap and cheerful 2X version bundled with the scope. A similar quality Celestron eyepiece from the same range has made a big difference too. IT has much better eye relief which is much appreciated by this spectacle wearer. And this is the mod to the RA drive box. You can just about see the RX module standing on end next to the cable entry with the drive wires each leading to a transistor wired across the button connections. I have learnt that the watchwords with everything related to astronomy on a budget appear to be patience and persistence. If you buy budget you must put up with quite a lot of frustration which is not because you are necessarily doing anything wrong it's that in many cases the equipment just isn't up to it e.g. sloppy mounts, wobbly tripods, sloppy focusers and a whole host of other things. There are of course plenty of things to learn and perfect, particularly polar alignment which is tricky but essential with an equatorial mount (particularly for astrophotography), collimation of Newtonian reflectors and actually just finding the targets (although if you can't find the moon unaided you'd best give up now 🤣). If you are the type of person who tries something and immediately gives up when it doesn't work first time and moves on to something new then astrophotography probably isn't for you but when you do make progress despite and not because of the budget equipment I have to say it's rather pleasing. So far my really memorable astronomical achievements/moments are: The first time I looked at the moon through the telescope - Wow! EVERY time I look at Jupiter through the telescope - Wow squared and that doesn't diminish the more times I do it! The first time I looked at Pleiades through the telescope The first time I got a half decent, sharp image of the moon after getting the hang of some software (Registax IIRC) When I finally managed to extract some detail (not a lot I grant you) in the Orion nebula My recent exploits and improvements in imaging Jupiter with various software packages My first recent wobbly image of Saturn In another post, if anyone's interested, I'll mention some of the other mods and gadgets I've concocted or used and also list some of the software packages I use to process images. In the meantime I'll leave you with perhaps my best image of Jupiter to date complete with the Great Red Spot and its 4 Galilean moons. Alan

And one wonders how much crime they have prevented? I'm guessing 3/5 of not-a-lot. It's a shame so many people feel the need! Unfortunately now, even when you get somewhere with a decent sky, some bod is shoving thousands of little satellites to buxxer it up. Still, they'll be handy when I want o access the internet in the middle of the Sahara. Of course, turning such problems into opportunities (oh no, I'm sounding like I'm back at work) the challenge of tracking and photographing the ISS is a very significant one and there are some who have had some spectacular results. I have enough trouble finding small dots in the sky that aren't, to all intents and purposes, moving! 🤣 ION Two laps of the Swiss Garden completed, a migraine after lunch followed by being asleep for a good deal of the afternoon. I still feel tired so I fancy an early night is on the cards. TTFN

Yes and now everyone around here thinks they need 5kW "Yard Lights" just to put the blxxdy cat out too .... It's mighty annoying.

Have you tried that 15 miles from Luton? This is probably the best you can see from here, moon or no moon 🤣

Morning All I started as a complete beginner, knowing absolutely nothing, and as a consequence my basic apparatus is very cheap and cheerful. A couple of years ago I bought a Skywatcher 130 with equatorial mount including a single axis (RA) mount. This was more by luck than judgement as I didn't appreciate the benefit of such a mount over a basic Azimuth & Elevation version at the time or indeed the necessity for it for astrophotography. For my first attempts at astrophotography I made an adapter for my son's mirror-less Canon camera body. I had a degree of success with this for both lunar and deep sky images. Last year I bought a dedicated astro-camera and despite all of my recent experience with budget equipment I bought a budget colour camera. The benefits of this where, like a cheap scope, for little money (it was about £130, which is about as cheap as you can get when cameras typically cost £300+ and many are in 4 figures) it gives you a taster of things to come if you can first spot the limitations of the equipment and then work round them. The watchwords with everything related to astronomy on a budget appear to be patience and persistence. If you are the type of person who tries something and immediately gives up when it doesn't work first time and moves on to something new then astrophotography probably isn't for you but when you do make progress despite and not because of the budget equipment I have to say it's rather pleasing. So far my really memorable achievements/moments are: The first time I looked at the moon through the telescope - Wow! EVERY time I look at Jupiter through the telescope - Wow squared that doesn't diminish the more times I do it! The first time I looked at Pleiades through the telescope The first time I got a half decent, sharp image of the moon after getting the hang of some software (Registax IIRC) When I finally managed to extract some detail (not a lot I grant you) in the Orion nebula My recent exploits and improvements in imaging Jupiter with various software packages My first recent wobbly image of Saturn Rather than fill up ER's with a load of astronomy details I'll give you full details of my set up and the things I've done to try and work around the limitations of my budget gear in this thread later on. ION I believe a walk is to be walked around the Swiss Gardens at Old Warden. TTFNQ

As in "CBA" to open RMWeb (or any other forum, app or Email) That's excellent news! ION More fiddling with the telescope, camera and the cranky old lap top out in the cold. Targets for tonight; Jupiter, Pleiades and Orion's belt. Jupiter videos look promising, star stills look, err, rubbish so a "a skill to be developed". Right, it's bedtime. Night All

Morning All Well what a perfect juxtaposition! Job done I fancy. Presumably, although they'll only be able to do so only if they've logged in to see if there are any to read ...... which sometime explains why I haven't had a reply to some of mine. ION In the "Credit where credit is due" department. Some of you may have picked up in the past my very subtle hints that I have been displeased with my local GPs over recent years. Well, following the successful application for an appointment last week I have now actually had a face to face appointment with one of the new GPs where not one but two different issues were discussed, plans where formulated and actions set in motion with the necessary degree of haste. So top marks to him and grateful thanks from me. It's very good being satisfied with service for once and not having to be grumpy! I think I need to do some research on the old Mondog today. It's developed a very poor tickover when cold recently so I need to find out what's happening / not happening under such conditions. It's only done just under 200K miles so barely run-in I would have thought 🤔 Other than that, not a lot on really. TTFN

Clockwork! Eh, I'm lucky! I've got one of those new-fangled electric motors things. And it's not one of those cheap dc efforts, it's a right proper stepper-motor job. Eh, I was lucky but tell that to the kids of today and they'll not believe you. Anyway, all jokes aside, it's carp. The whole thing is very cheap, built down to a very low price albeit actually a remarkably comprehensive beginners kit. The trouble is that very cheapness means you've really, really got to persist in order to get any real results at all. That probably explains why there are so many "Unused" beginners telescopes on Ebay, Marketplace etc etc because the majority try using them once get nowhere, get frustrated and take up puddle jumping instead. Maybe it's designed to sort the men from the boys (can we still say that?) and I'm fortunate that I can, to an extent, build my way out of its limitations where as some other would just have to buy their way out. One day I'll have a bigger, better telescope. I'll draw the line at home build before it gets to trying to make DIY 12" parabolic mirrors though 🤣 Here's the elevation bearing, spot the slop ..... The elevation position is set by a crude, coarse thread screw acting against a stop which doesn't work with the best mechanical advantage due to its design. It's true that once set for the evening the whole thing is clamped up tight and shouldn't be moved again but as one clamps it up tight it moves thus undoing the careful elevation alignment with the pole star*. Not by much but a miss is as good as a mile so to speak and you have to try and guess how much its going to move as you tighten it up and compensate for it. It normally takes many attempts. Get it wrong or not bother and the telescope won't track objects accurately and they will very quickly wander out of the Field of View. Annoying for visual observations but a disaster for astrophotography with long exposures. Additional benefits of DIY telescope upgrades is that it gives you something to do whilst waiting for the clouds to be off and gives you the knowledge to know what to look for when you finally do lash out a 4 (or 5) figure sum when you finally do a retail upgrade. * To be more precise "Over from the pole star a tiny smidgen" as the pole star lies very close to true north but not quite on it. Of course, poor Chimpy doesn't even have the luxury of a convenient star on his pole to point his telescope at in the first place. TTFNQ

Pre-Munch All! Google translated for me (I don't do Dutch, some would say I barely do English); "We have worked with heart and soul in and on our beautiful company for twenty years, but now the time has come for us to retire. We will stop our activities on June 29, 2024. What started as a hobby with buying and selling N-Spoor trains via Marktplaats and eBay, quickly became a house-filling activity. We were quickly found as Freebit.nl and our range of used N-Spoor grew and grew. At that time we were one of the few providers with only N-Spoor. What followed was the organization of the first N-Spoor fair. Together with all our children we set up the event at Bousema. We thought this was fantastic! After this, many more fairs followed at Bousema and for 6 years in the large church in Lochem. People still talk about this in nice words. We enjoyed organizing these fairs and it was good to see all those enthusiastic N-Spoorders together. The idea of Freebit.nl was to form a platform of and for the N-Spoorder. In addition to supply, purchasing and sales and the organization of trade fairs, we have also set up the N-Spoorforum, which has brought many of you into contact with each other to share the hobby. In 2008 we took the step and converted our garage into a small store, N-Spoorstore-Freebit.nl. But before long this space was too small. We never thought that the range and demand would grow so quickly. Less than two years later, in 2010, we moved to the store next to the Avia Gas Station in Lochem. An important element in the store was to bring the N-Spoorders together. The coffee was always ready. This space also quickly turned out to be too small. More than 7 years ago we moved to our current location on Eekmolenweg in Lochem. And yes, this space has also been too small for a while. But no, unfortunately we are not going to move again to a larger space (although the plans have certainly been there). All these years we have traveled across town and country in the Netherlands and Germany to visit trade fairs, from very local to major events. From Zelhem to Stuttgart, from Houten to Dortmund, from Dordrecht to Leipzig. In the early years we mainly had the help of our children; Peter, Marieke and Ilse. Over the years, they spent more time building their families, which meant their help at the store became less and less. This was followed up with the help of many (N-) track enthusiasts. We are very grateful for this. We would particularly like to mention Ilse's help; We are proud that Ilse has accompanied us to trade fairs all these years. In addition, she has often contributed to the ins and outs of our company in the background. We wouldn't have gotten this far without Ilse and we are very grateful to her for that. We are very proud that we have built such a great company in 20 years! In recent years we have tried to sell our company, but unfortunately this was not successful for various reasons. We regret that we were unable to find someone who wanted to continue N-Spoorstore-Freebit.nl. If anyone is interested, this is of course still possible. Please do not hesitate to contact us. Ineke's illness has further increased the realization that there is more to life than work. We have both reached retirement age and would like to enjoy and go out in the coming years. More enjoyment and time for our children and grandchildren, as long as it is given to us. We thank you for your business and all the wonderful years! Hans, Ineke, children and the team." ION Re-arranged plans yesterday courtesy of engineering work on Thameslink & Great Northern led to a walk being walked and now a thrash has been thrashed on the RD. I'm sure the weather on both days here has not been as forecast last Friday. This afternoon it appears I have to become "The Repair Shop" and repair an ornament that apparently and accidentally leapt out of an upstairs bedroom window on to the ground outside (paving slab / soil combo). After that I might amuse myself looking at the telescope's equatorial mount and try and figure out a way of improving the elevation pivot which has more slack and wobble in it than the proverbial in a bucket. Once again I see the solution as a separation of the bearing and clamping functions in the yoke which appears to be made of something akin to cheese wrt its mechanical properties. Lunch time now. TTFN

Evening Each! Oh yes please, I seem to remember porting it to the Fluke 1720 Instrument Controller we used to use. It was mighty fine bit of kit in its day. Well, I had to do something when I was bored. Happy days. ION Most importantly; I spoke to Bear again today. He's hanging on in there but not really making much progress 😢 I will check-up on him again in a few days and maybe even give him a gentle cajole for us to go out somewhere even if it's only for coffee. I spent a happy hour on the phone to HMRC this morning sorting out a significant tax issue brought about by one of the providers (I know not which one is truly to blame) who manage my primary source of income. It was a Curate's Egg of a call; I had to suffer (as we all do) the ridiculous waffle about irrelevant topics, finding help online and all the other typical ballcocks that go on and then when I finally managed to get to the "OK hold the line for the next available advisor by the way we're very busy" I then had to suffer (again, as we all do) the carp Muzak and constant interruptions (Your call is important, have you been online ......) meaning you can't actually concentrate on anything while you are waiting. BUT! When I finally spoke to "James" he was the very model of politeness, efficiency, knowledge & ability to understand the issue, re-compute the computations, come up with the same answer that I did (that's pleasing as I'm not an accountant) and finally take the necessary remedial actions. I thanked him profusely for his assistance. I'd been asked to take part in the standard satisfaction survey afterwards so it was suitable brickbats for them and particularly large bouquets for James. I do wish they'd ditch all of that preliminary tosh and annoyance so the waiting time isn't entirely wasted! IOON I've had another go at processing my Saturn imagery from the other day. It will never be very good but I've found some extra functions in the processing software - they were there all along, I just didn't think of using them. Anyway, it's looking a little better now than it did. This is the video that software processed to produce the image. You'll notice I was having particular difficulties with the mount on Tuesday 🤣 Night Awl