*** The Official Astronomy & Universe Thread ***

After seeing a post by Cosimo in the 'Images of items I have purchased' thread, specifically a picture of the book Mapping the Cosmos by James Geach I went ahead and bought it for the bargain price of £11.95 delivered.

I have always been fascinated by Astronomy and I am eager to learn more, can anyone recommend any other books for a beginner?
 
Got a £50 Apple voucher for redundancy leaving prezzie so been looking at astro apps.. thing is:
1. Free Aladin - beats 99.9% of astro object programs
2. Free Stellarium - decent sky atlas..
3. Nebulosity 2 - I have this.. it still works and I'm working with the author on camera support for ATIK drivers I wrote..
4. TheSkyX Professional with camera addon - I have this on 'loan' for a year to assist in help with getting support for the ATIK drivers I wrote.. (this is faster than stellarium)
5. PixInsight .. I have this as it's my main processing software..
6. I've written my own capture software that has realtime alignment and processing..

Hmmm... only SkySafari in the app store.. any other App Store apps suggestions?
 
Mik3 said:
Thats great Nick, I've been tempted to do something like this myself as I dont have room for an observatory. Can I ask how much it cost for the mounting bits and bobs?
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If you're going for an octagon - then you'll need to make a concrete former. Using a Sonotube cylinder former would give you a quicker and cheaper route. The octagon is 10" across.

The former was made from a sheet of OSB2, about £24 IIRC with 1x2" wood reinforcement to prevent concrete blowout a 2.4m length is about £7. Took a couple of days to make with a circular saw and clamps etc.
Exterior varnish to protect.. but another option is to use a ply box design with inserts to give the octagon (I would do this look back on it!).

I used 0.35m cubed of concrete (actually slightly less). I used pea-shingle, sharp sand and concrete from wickes. I created a thread on an astro forum but a link would break the rules.. I used mastercrete as the bags are plastic and water proof (means you can keep a complete bag).
Base is 0.61x0.61x0.80 m = 0.3 m^3
Pier as 10"x36" = 0.0463 m^3
Total = 0.3465 m^2 (a little additional)

The resulting quantities:
Cement: 111 kgs
Sharp sand: 208 kgs
Gravel: 416 kgs
Water: 61 ltrs

111/25 = 4.44 = 5 bags concrete, 5 for £4.82, 5x4.82 = £24.10
208/25 = 8.32 = 9 bags sharp sand, £1.82, 9x1.82 = £16.38 but .. just checking the 10 for 1.40 is £14..
416/25 = 16.64 = 17 bags pea shingle, 10 for £1.83, 17x1.83 = £31.11
Total 735 Kg.. (£69.21)
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Ford focus could take 350Kg.. so three journeys later and the materials were in the garage.

10mm x 6m rebar was £5 each, so two are enough giving six 2m lengths = £10

Wickes post digger - you'll need something like this to dig the depth. A shovel (not a spade) for adding stuff to the mixer..

Concrete mixer (just a 240V one) from HSS Hire. Think this was about £30-40 for two days (gives a option if the weather bad)

Four 1 meter M12 threaded rods and bolts, I can't remember the cost just picked them up at B&Q.

Two Corsa solid break discs £16 each. 12mm metal drill bit (you'll want to a slow drill for metal). The corsa disk needed a bit of a grind inside to get the EQ6 to sit on it fully.

Lastly a tarp to cover for the first couple of weeks as the concrete is curing. You'll need to be careful as the current night temps are dropping. I had a 2degC night on the first night and I had to put a heater under the tarp.

So total in materials etc was about 180-250 depending if you have things like drill bits etc.

The hole is 24x24" (paving slab) but 90-100cm deep, with a 10" diameter octagon pier at about 100cm tall. Digging the hole with the post digger took an 1-2 hours because the garden is on sand, all the way down to the real sandy base soil. The concrete former took best part of four days to get sorted. The concrete pour was done in a morning.
 
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Anyone else keeping an eye on ultrascope? I'm hopping it will be a cheapish way in.
They're hopping to release the first beta files, in time for people to build it over the Christmas holiday. Eventually they hope to have several sizes upto a 20" mirror.

Looking forward to the BOM to see what the actual cost will be.


https://openspaceagency.squarespace.com/
 
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Glaucus said:
Anyone else keeping an eye on ultrascope? I'm hopping it will be a cheapish way in.
They're hopping to release the first beta files, in time for people to build it over the Christmas holiday. Eventually they hope to have several sizes upto a 20" mirror.

Looking forward to the BOM to see what the actual cost will be.

https://openspaceagency.squarespace.com/
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3.5 Inch mirror ARO
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Hmm that's not going to give a very high resolution and/or light grasp. If you know the positions of each scope then you could treat all as a robotic scope array but you would need high accuracy location and then high resolution positioning/tracking unless you're going to use star plate solving.
 
NickK said:
Hmm that's not going to give a very high resolution and/or light grasp. If you know the positions of each scope then you could treat all as a robotic scope array but you would need high accuracy location and then high resolution positioning/tracking unless you're going to use star plate solving.
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To start with, 8" and 20" to follow and yes it's designed from the outset to be able to be clustered.
 
Glaucus said:
To start with, 8" and 20" to follow and yes it's designed from the outset to be able to be clustered.
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Would be better with an iPhone/iPad/Android phone.. but as MS is sponsoring it means all windows (Nokia have a vastly lower market presence - even as Microsoft).. Gambit is also a US government team so it's not really an international space agency type of affair.. especially as it's initial targets are satellites.. There's no openness on the targets being set or how that happens..
 
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confused, it is open. It's not locked down, everything is under an open license.
Other phones don't have high res cameras, which are also very cheap.
You aren't going to be using your normal phone on it, so that hardly matters.
 
Nick...very nice pillar there. Very jealous. There is no way that would get past SWMBO Planning in my house.

Wirth regards to your £50 voucher, not sure if it paid for or not in the iTunes, but I paid for Stellarium on my Android phone and am very pleased with it...especially as it was only a few quid. Comes in very handy when out in the garden and am looking for new targets while imaging the others...speaking of which...got any spare Atik cameras that need 'testing' by another user ;):p:p.

Managed to get out on sunday night and am not happy with my results at all. Have decided that I need to bite the bullet and buy a dedicated guide camera instead of arsing around with bodged webcams. Am happy with using my DSLR (Nikon D7100) for now as a CCD is way to expensive at present. Also looking ot save for PixInsight too, but that will be a long way off, so will stick with Nebulosity and PS for now.

You mentioned that you had put a build log on an astro forum.....don't suppose that is SGL is it?
 
Shelster said:
Nick...very nice pillar there. Very jealous. There is no way that would get past SWMBO Planning in my house.

Wirth regards to your £50 voucher, not sure if it paid for or not in the iTunes, but I paid for Stellarium on my Android phone and am very pleased with it...especially as it was only a few quid. Comes in very handy when out in the garden and am looking for new targets while imaging the others...speaking of which...got any spare Atik cameras that need 'testing' by another user ;):p:p.

Managed to get out on sunday night and am not happy with my results at all. Have decided that I need to bite the bullet and buy a dedicated guide camera instead of arsing around with bodged webcams. Am happy with using my DSLR (Nikon D7100) for now as a CCD is way to expensive at present. Also looking ot save for PixInsight too, but that will be a long way off, so will stick with Nebulosity and PS for now.

You mentioned that you had put a build log on an astro forum.....don't suppose that is SGL is it?
Click to expand...

Hehe yup SGL :D
 
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