Author Archives: james

Solar Imaging with the 127 Mak

Posted on September 11, 2012 by james

Someone was asking about the set-up of a solar imaging system, so I took these photos of mine “in action”. There’s really nothing special here other than the motor focuser that I cobbled onto the back of the Mak. The … Continue reading →

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Stacking Canon RAW CR2 Files For Solar and Lunar Imaging

Posted on September 11, 2012 by james

I use Deep Sky Stacker for stacking images from my 450D for wide field shots of the night sky, but I’ve struggled getting anything to work for solar and lunar images. Some people I’ve discussed it with have found no … Continue reading →

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Solar PV Generation Update, September 2012

Posted on September 11, 2012 by james

We have reached the end of the first year with out solar PV installation and quite an odd one it has been, too. We had one of the mildest winters and generated far more in the first six months than … Continue reading →

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10″ Dob First Light

Posted on September 5, 2012 by james

Unbelievably it’s actually six weeks since I managed this, but I got around to writing it up in the end… Very unexpectedly, having finished my dob build the day before, around midnight there was a break in the cloud and … Continue reading →

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Filtering Light Pollution for Wide Field Star Images

Posted on September 5, 2012 by james

I’ve been taking some wide field images of the night sky with my Canon 450D recently and whilst we have very little light pollution here compared with most places in the UK, even a small amount bleeds into longer exposure … Continue reading →

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Just Give Me a Buzz

Posted on August 20, 2012 by james

I received a phone call from BT last week. “Oh dear, what have they broken now” I thought. But no, it transpired that an engineer had been out to visit a “green cabinet” in a local hamlet and had to … Continue reading →

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My 10″ Dobsonian ‘build’

Posted on August 20, 2012 by james

I’ve quoted the word ‘build’ because in some respects this turned out not to be. However, there’s a fair bit of woodwork involved, so I reckon it still counts… Some months back I wrote that I had obtained a 10″ … Continue reading →

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Solar PV Generation Update, August 2012

Posted on August 3, 2012 by james

Well, at last we’ve had a little sunshine this summer, though ten days in July is a pretty poor showing even so. Can’t complain though; it’s a whole lot better than May and June. Generation for July was 407kWh. Lower … Continue reading →

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Nginx Rate-limiting with a Whitelist

Posted on August 2, 2012 by james

I recently needed to deploy a rate-limiting solution for a site where certain IP addresses would be white-listed and not subjected to the rate limits. Google found me an example in a blog that turned out not to work, though … Continue reading →

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Another Attempt at a Cygnus Widefield Image

Posted on August 1, 2012 by james

The evening after my previous attempt the sky looked better so I set up again mostly with the same kit (EQ3-2, 450D, 18-55mm lens at 18mm & f/4.5, but this time I used APT to control the camera from the … Continue reading →

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