Category Archives: Astronomy

The joy of supporting filter wheels

Posted on October 22, 2014 by james

I’m working on support for filter wheels for oaCapture at the moment.  I’ve had a few hardware niggles that I’ll document separately, but just getting the code right is proving something of a struggle.  Every time I make a change … Continue reading →

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Astro EQ conversion of EQ3-2 (part 5)

Posted on October 17, 2014 by james

Once the RA motor mounting was sorted I started on the DEC bracket which is somewhat simpler, being made from a section of 4mm thick aluminium angle. Again there’s only one bolt for fixing to the mount, so the bracket … Continue reading →

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Still Life in Green and Black

Posted on October 17, 2014 by james

35mm, 27mm, 24mm and 19mm Tele Vue Panoptics, currently the physically largest eyepieces I have, next to a 5mm Baader Genuine Ortho. And something Green and Black for scale…

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libudev to the rescue!

Posted on October 5, 2014 by james

Well, on Linux at least, for the moment… Some time ago when I was writing part of oaCapture I wanted to be able to tell whether the currently connected camera was a Philips SPC900. Ideally, given that I knew, say, … Continue reading →

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Astro EQ conversion of EQ3-2 (part 4)

Posted on September 12, 2014 by james

My new drills have arrived and I’ve now drilled all the holes for the RA motor mount. It looks a bit like a Swiss cheese. This is the “outside” face, with holes for the motor flange, the four mounting screws, … Continue reading →

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Astro EQ conversion of EQ3-2 (part 3)

Posted on September 3, 2014 by james

My pulleys and drive belts arrived today. I removed the grub screws and drilled out the 48-tooth pulleys to 6mm (from 5mm) in the lathe to fit the worm spindles and the 16-tooth pulleys to 5mm (from 3mm) to fit … Continue reading →

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A new scope arrives

Posted on September 2, 2014 by james

No pictures yet, but last week a new telescope arrived. I’ve been promising myself an MN190 for some time if one came up second hand at a fair price and took the opportunity when it did having passed on several … Continue reading →

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Coronado PST filter mod for Atik 314L+

Posted on September 1, 2014 by james

In my previous posting about the mod I’ve done for my PST to move the BF5 closer to the sensor of my ASI120 I had an idea about doing the same for my Atik 314L+. I know this camera is … Continue reading →

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Coronado PST BF5 positioning mod

Posted on August 31, 2014 by james

A few days ago I posted about the problems with vignetting when imaging with a PST and decided that for me a solution might be to move the BF5 unit as close to the camera sensor as possible so that … Continue reading →

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Astro EQ conversion of EQ3-2 (part 2)

Posted on August 29, 2014 by james

I ordered some aluminium channel (1″x2″x1/8″) to make up the RA motor mount which arrived yesterday. I chose this size because there’s only one mounting hole for each of the normal aftermarket motors on the EQ3-2 and this would give … Continue reading →

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