Author Archives: james

Pathetic “10 Best Telescopes” Feature in The Independent

Posted on May 18, 2012 by james

I’m not entirely sure why I find myself so incensed over this particular piece of trash journalism (and I use the word in the loosest possible sense). Perhaps because it aptly demonstrates the utter contempt for their readership endemic in … Continue reading →

Posted in Astronomy | 1 Comment

Lifecam Saturn Montage

Posted on May 16, 2012 by james

I spent some time last weekend capturing images of Saturn with my modded Lifecam using different SharpCap settings. This is a very different camera to use compared with the SPC900. There’s no direct control of gain, and the pixel size … Continue reading →

Posted in Astroimaging, Astronomy | Tagged | Leave a comment

Observation Report 15 May 2012

Posted on May 16, 2012 by james

I’ve been doing a lot of planetary imaging recently, so tonight decided that I’d have a dedicated observing session and at about 11:45 took my ST120 into the field in front of the house where I have as clear a … Continue reading →

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Installing Grub on MD Disk Partitions

Posted on May 5, 2012 by james

I rarely have to do this, so I can never recall exactly how on those odd occasions when it does come up. Usually it’s when one of the boot disks in a server has been replaced. Anyhow, as much to … Continue reading →

Posted in Computing, Linux | Leave a comment

Microsoft Lifecam Cinema Planetary Camera Mod

Posted on April 20, 2012 by james

Thanks to the cloud rolling in rather early last night I decided to do the conversion of my Lifecam Cinema for astro use. I was intended to fit it into a Billetparts adapter, but they’re out of stock and I … Continue reading →

Posted in Astro Equipment, Astroimaging, Astronomy | Leave a comment

Chrooted SFTP for Linux

Posted on April 20, 2012 by james

I had a few problems recently when I was trying to set up chrooted SFTP for a single user on a CentOS6 server. Whichever set of instructions I followed, I couldn’t get it to work for me. Eventually, combining information … Continue reading →

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Xbox Skycam Falls at the Final Hurdle

Posted on April 19, 2012 by james

I’ve been experimenting this evening with different lenses in the Xbox webcam. It looks like with a wide-angle lens with a field of view of 160 to 170 degrees the stars just don’t put enough light onto the sensor to … Continue reading →

Posted in Astroimaging, Astronomy, Projects | Leave a comment

qastrocam-g2 — Astro Image Capture for Linux

Posted on April 19, 2012 by james

Today, pretty much by accident, I stumbled over qastrocam-g2. It’s an astro-imaging capture application for Linux. Thus far I’ve been muddling through with SharpCap, which is absolutely no criticism of that application at all. I just really can’t get on … Continue reading →

Posted in Astroimaging, Astronomy, Computing, Linux | 8 Comments

Xbox Live Camera on Linux (Part 5)

Posted on April 18, 2012 by james

A brief gap in the clouds this evening gave me a window of about five minutes to test out a couple of Xbox cameras under a night-time sky. I took 30 frames of five seconds each, ten seconds apart. Here … Continue reading →

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Xbox Live Camera on Linux (Part 4)

Posted on April 18, 2012 by james

The promised instructions on rebuilding the kernel UVC kernel module. Here’s what I did on my Ubuntu 11.10 Aspire 1. If you substitute in your own kernel version number then you should be ok if you’re running other releases. I … Continue reading →

Posted in Astroimaging, Astronomy, Computing, Linux | 1 Comment