Part 3 of the Obs Tour series is coming (hopefully!) on Saturday, November 10th, at 1745 CST/2345 UTC, as a LIVSTREAM!
I’ll be livestreaming a data acquisition session, showing the software that runs and monitors the obs, how a session is put together and configured, and answering questions.
Join me Saturday night!
Part 2 of the Observatory Tour Video Series has been up for a while now. I just suck, and forgot to blog it. 🙂
This is LDN 1153, 1160, 1164, and 1165 in Cephus, taken from TriStar Observatory from 2018-09-29 to 2018-10-12.
First saw this target imaged a couple of years ago, and was really struck by LDN 1165 and 1164 in particular…always looked like a seahorse to me. Made a note to image it at some point. When I began looking at framing option, I saw 1160 and 1153 could add some interest to the field if I framed it so “the seahorse” was off to the left, so that became my goal.
Pretty happy with the end result on this. LRGB becomes more difficult to do well here every year, particularly when it’s as warm as it was early this month. Our 25C overnight lows made it difficult at best to get the sensor down to a reasonable temp.
Original integrations may be downloaded here by anyone who wishes to have a go.
===============================================================================
Referentiation Matrix (Gnomonic projection = Matrix * Coords[x,y]):
-0.000380617 +2.71178e-06 +0.505464
-2.85559e-06 -0.000380646 +0.377226
+0 +0 +1
Projection origin.. [1335.001819 981.000515]px -> [RA:22 04 25.257 Dec:+59 03 10.27]
Resolution ........ 1.370 arcsec/px
Rotation .......... -0.421 deg
Focal ............. 484.69 mm
Pixel size ........ 3.22 um
Field of view ..... 1d 0' 58.7" x 44' 48.5"
Image center ...... RA: 22 04 25.257 Dec: +59 03 10.27
Image bounds:
top-left ....... RA: 22 08 23.753 Dec: +59 25 34.68
top-right ...... RA: 22 00 24.306 Dec: +59 25 06.95
bottom-left .... RA: 22 08 21.080 Dec: +58 40 46.25
bottom-right ... RA: 22 00 31.941 Dec: +58 40 19.09
===============================================================================
Math.round(80*40/100)*((1/(FWHM*FWHM))-(1/(FWHMMax*FWHMMax)))/((1/(FWHMMin*FWHMMin))-(1/(FWHMMax*FWHMMax)))+Math.round(80*35/100)*(1-(Eccentricity-EccentricityMin)/(EccentricityMax-EccentricityMin))+Math.round(80*25/100)*(SNRWeight-SNRWeightMin)/(SNRWeightMax-SNRWeightMin)+20
Finished a 4-panel mosaic of LDN889 over the weekend. ~48 hours of total integration time in this image.
SHO Hubble Palette
“Natural” Palette
Annotated version
So…I’ve pretty much had it with Weather Underground.
So, yeah…in short…fuck Weather Underground.
Got a request a while back for an obs tour video. Figured I’d chop the tour up into sections, each featuring a different component or system. Here is the first of those segments, covering the main imaging rig itself.
What a back and forth summer it’s been.
June’s trip to Marathon was fraught with gear issues, most notably my AP Mach1 GTO literally grinding itself to bits, thanks to some seized bearings.
Upon returning, the mount immediately went back to Astro-Physics, who thankfully did their usual terrific job of diagnosing, repairing, and returning the mount to me in tip top shape.
The Lunt LS50THa also got a long-needed trip back home, where the fine folks at Lunt Solar Systems diagnosed a clouded blue glass filter causing an inability to achieve any sharp images.
Lunt’s repair and turnaround was lightning fast, and they even installed a new Feather Touch Focuser for me while there.
The AP gods weren’t done though! Earlier this month, a limit switch failed on the obs roof that resulted in the roof always reporting closed…bit of an issue, that. A new set of limit switches from Amazon resolved that issue.
One upcoming event of note : On September 9, 2018 at 7:30 AM CDT/12:30 PM UTC I’ll be livestreaming an ISS transit of the Sun, hopefully through both the Lunt and the SV80. The transit itself should occur shortly after 7:50 AM CDT. Fingers crossed for good weather!
Techy data from Transit Finder
Sunday 2018-09-09 07:50:08.39 • Solar transit
ISS angular size: 24.62″; distance: 1122.23 km
Angular separation: 0.0′; azimuth: 95.6°; altitude: 16.5°
Center line distance: 0.04 km; visibility path width: 16.33 km
Transit duration: 2.20 s; transit chord length: 31.8′R.A.: 11h 11m; Dec: +05° 12′; parallactic angle: 46.3°
ISS velocity: 14.4 ′/s (angular); 4.70 km/s (transverse)
ISS velocity: 5.68 km/s (radial); 7.37 km/s (total);
Direction of motion relative to zenith: -134.1°
Sun angular size: 31.8′; 77.4 times larger than the ISS
It has been a busy busy busy few weeks…both in and out of the Obs. Of course, you don’t care about out of the obs, so….
The power and obs monitoring project is more or less complete. There may still be a few bugs/tweaks to deal with over the next few weeks, but things seem to be pretty stable and happy and correct now. 🙂
It starts with grabbing serial data from the TriMetric 2030 battery system monitor. Can’t stress enough how amazing the gang at Bogart Engineering was helping me work through issues and answering questions. They not only make great products, but offer great support and service!
That little device is then read by a little data collection app, which pulls the TriMetric’s serial data, along with a JSON feed from Sequence Generator Pro‘s API, and an XML feed from the RigRunner 4005i, and Dweets everything with a separate thing ID for each device. Finally, it drops some of the data into a MySQL DB as well, via Maurits van der Schee’s very slick single-file CRUD API.
So that’s the data collection. 🙂
From there, a locally hosted installation of FreeBoard pulls all the latest dweets for each device, and gives us our current status page.
Finally, the Google Charts API is put to use talking to the DB, for some historical charting.
SOMEWHERE in all of this, I actually managed to get a few clear nights as well, and finish data acquisition on M51, and begin acquisition on M58 and the Siamese Twins. Those will be coming along soon, I hope. 🙂
So I LOVE the Bogart Engineering TriMetric TM-2030 and SC-2030 monitor and charge controller. A match made in heaven, for sure.
Now, according to the TriMetric’s Technical Manual :
Serial data output: For extreme techies only: The TM-2030 also has a serial 0-5V output with streaming “real
time” serial (ASCII) data that could be used to control other electronics.
Oooooo! I’m an extreme techie! (Well…I wish I was anyway) I could get power system data to put on the obs status page I haven’t built yet!
This is where things went bad. *lol*
Well..ok..not bad. But like any good “maker project”, nothing’s as it seems, nothing’s complete, there’s no reliable thorough documentation…you know the drill. 🙂
SO! Over the weekend of the 17th, I was able to at least make headway, and start getting streams of data from the TriMetric!
Since there’s much to lead one astray, and I can’t POSSIBLY be the only one wanting to do this, I’m going to try to document what i find and learn along the way.
Code, pics, and diagrams can be found on GitHub (always check Dev Branch first!)
Livestream tonight, NGC 2174 data acquisition.
6:15pm CST
Come watch the robots do their thing!
https://www.twitch.tv/eorequis
The Weather Network – Nashville, Tennessee