Astronomy and Astrophotography

beteljuice · Post by **beteljuice** » Tue 21 Jun 2011 5:31 pm

Gina ! - windows ! you !

Gina · Post by **Gina** » Tue 21 Jun 2011 5:47 pm

beteljuice wrote:Gina ! - windows ! you !

Well... er yes, I'm afraid so. Needed for Cumulus and Yawcam, the best webcam app I've found. Particularly for the MS Lifecam HD Cinema webcam. But my main OSs are still Unix based viz. Mac OS X and Linux. G-Weather is running on a 10yr old laptop under Linux, this one I'm using ATM is home built AMD64 X2 running Linux Mint and my best laptop is a MacBook Pro. Lovely machine!

Gina · Post by **Gina** » Tue 21 Jun 2011 5:59 pm

nking wrote:I see a still of you but it would be better if you streamed the video so we can see you hard at it I expect that ground is still a bit hard even with the rain we've had in June so you take care and bend those knees

Yes, streamed video would be good, wouldn't it?

The rain has penetrated down to the clay level and is still pretty wet and heavy. Main problem is stones. I was well down into the clay with the pier base hole and then it was hand trowel work - pretty hard.

I am doing my best to take care of my back - in my last big push I rather overdid it and suffered as a result. Now I'm taking it easier

The site has developed various levels and I can sit down to dig out with the trowel, so that helps

Just dug out the second of the six holes, mainly with trowel, just loosening a bit with spade.

BTW, I now have the north facing webcam on line too.

Gina · Post by **Gina** » Tue 21 Jun 2011 6:02 pm

geoffw wrote: What about a picture of YOU Gina hefting the spade!

You'll probably see me on the webcam but I may pose for one... who knows

freelander86 · Post by **freelander86** » Sat 23 Jul 2011 9:22 pm

Hi Gina,

I sent you a PM and then found this thread! What a great project! I have exactly the same telescope and may try a similar mount. But I have no idea what you have got? The White gimbal/mount is very different to the one that's supplied...

Gina · Post by **Gina** » Mon 07 Nov 2011 7:33 pm

Due to ardent pursuing of my astronomy and observatory building I'm afraid I've neglected these forums lately

I haven't given up on weather stations and still have mine running, though have had some problems with the wind sensor data transmission.

I see that when I last visited this thread I had started building my observatory and have been expending nearly all my spare time and effort on that so here is a quick update. I'll post more later...

The self-build observatory.

This building consists of two "rooms", a telescope room , with a roll off roof to give access to the sky and a "warm room" separated form it, where the temperature can be raised a bit without affecting viewing. The telescope is mounted on a very solid concrete pier to avoid vibrations and then on an electronically controlled telescope mount to "point" the 'scope at the object to be viewed. The warm room provides a better human environment and will contain computers etc.

Here's a couple of photos of the current state of the build.

2011-11-06-08.JPG

2011-11-06-09.JPG

I'll post more info on how this has been going and stages leading up to it in the last year or two shortly.

Meanwhile, I can link to one of my threads on Stargazers Lounge (a UK astronomy board) viz. http://stargazerslounge.com/diy-observa ... build.html This links to the start of the thread from where you can see the detailed full build so far in words and pictures.

There is another (very long) thread in the same forum all about the design of this "astro-shed" here :- http://stargazerslounge.com/diy-observa ... atory.html This goes through all my detailed thoughts and ramblings on the design of an observatory, covering many design changes along the way and views of other members of the board. These and other threads were a great help to me.

My main weather station webcam has been turned to the SE (from S) to cover the observatory build and an extra web page added to my weather site to allow for a full resolution (1280x800) image from this webcam. The upload rate has also been increased to three per minute. The lower resolution image is still available on the usual weather site web page.

High res webcam image here :- http://ginad.org.uk/weathergd/Webcam-big.html

Post by **steve** » Mon 07 Nov 2011 9:18 pm

I'd been wondering where you'd got to, and now I know... that's looking really good!

Gina · Post by **Gina** » Mon 07 Nov 2011 9:48 pm

Thank you Steve

And sorry I deserted you all for a while. I felt the need to get the observatory done ASAP before the weather turns too bad. Shouldn't be too much longer now before it's weatherproof then the pressure will be off and I can spend some time on some of my other projects as well, including weather stations and software. I would like to get Cumulus running again on one of the XP machines - probably in my warm room. I may try it on my recently acquired EeePC netbook I got cheap from Morgans. It runs XP Home. When I last looked Cumulus was already well ahead of my own fledgling software

I have also a couple of things to try to improve my Fine Offset station hardware.

nking · Post by **nking** » Mon 07 Nov 2011 11:05 pm

Hi Gina,

I have missed you. I thought something may have happened and now I can see it has.... very impressive! That's one hell of a mount you've got, it must have taken quite some effort to get it in place. Looking forward to completion and some great pictures of the stars etc.

All the best

Gina · Post by **Gina** » Tue 08 Nov 2011 12:07 pm

nking wrote:Hi Gina,

I have missed you. I thought something may have happened and now I can see it has.... very impressive! That's one hell of a mount you've got, it must have taken quite some effort to get it in place. Looking forward to completion and some great pictures of the stars etc.

All the best

Thank you Neil

The NEQ6 Pro mount is certainly quite heavy - I lifted it in stages, setting up platforms at various heights. Handled with great care - it was expensive! But everyone in the know says a good mount is well worth it

In the unlikely event that I need to take it off again, I can now arrange a hoist suspended from the obsy roof

The roof takes my weight without flinching so will certainly carry the weight of the mount

mcrossley · Post by **mcrossley** » Tue 08 Nov 2011 12:52 pm

Glad to see you're still at it Gina. That rain gauge will need moving now

Gina · Post by **Gina** » Tue 08 Nov 2011 1:39 pm

Yes, it will - that I know

The mast and wind sensors need moving too. And I shall be moving the Stevenson Screen. I've yet to decide where the rain gauge is going but the box will be going on a bracket on the north side of the obsy and the mast on the north wall outside the warm room. I haven't quite worked everything out as yet.

Gina · Post by **Gina** » Tue 08 Nov 2011 9:29 pm

Put latest Cumulus on my netbook and set it up. It uploads once from the File Menu > Web Update then no more. Must have something wrong.

nking · Post by **nking** » Wed 09 Nov 2011 8:15 am

If you haven't already taken a look, it's probably worth checking the Configuration/Internet settings.

Gina · Post by **Gina** » Wed 09 Nov 2011 10:48 am

nking wrote:If you haven't already taken a look, it's probably worth checking the Configuration/Internet settings.

Yes, have done that but maybe I'll check again. I have it set to upload every 10 minutes.

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