Astronomy

2nd Weather Balloon (from 2010)

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Back in 2010 I was part of a team that sent up a couple of weather balloons on a NC spacegrant. I posted about the first one (which flew straight into a thunderstorm) a long time ago, but with the recent weather balloons in the news, I decided to go back and look up my old photos from the second balloon.  In the pic above the yellow balloon was the first one, the green plot is of this second balloon.

We launched from Monroe Airport in NC and the path of the balloon followed the path of HWY 74, which is the main road in the area. There are a couple of good pics of Wadesboro, NC and Lake Tillery as well.

This one went about 75k ft. in elevation. You can *just* make out the curvature of the earth in some of the photos. We launched on a beautiful clear day and we were able to visually track the balloon’s full ascent AND descent. Fun times! Luckily it didn’t freeze on the ascent so we got some better pics. We stocked this one with a bunch of candy like last time and it was fun eating space candy again!

Geeky Valentine’s Gifts: Whirlpool Galaxy Pun, Making Rainbows in Your House, and Sweet as Pi

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If you are looking for unique valentines day gifts that are a bit nerdy, you’ve come to the right place. It’s probably no surprise that geeky Valentine’s are a fav of mine.

So, rainbow prisms are pretty nifty, but I wanted the rainbow effect a little more full force in my house. I have been super happy with this decorative glass window film for creating rainbows in my house. Make sure to measure and get the size you need (All I needed was the smallest 17×78 size).

This works best in a window that gets direct sunlight and even a small amount can create the effect. I cut my remaining scraps into half/quarter circles and added to several windows in my house. Here’s an example of rainbows created during the day on our cat (don’t mind the toddler clutter).

As a nerdy Valentine’s gift, this would go really well with this card. (If you are feeling cheeky, check out the other inappropriate cards by Suckycards on Etsy).

Okay, the second idea is a space themed gift. The Whirlpool Galaxy, Messier 51a (or M51 for short) is the source and subject of this next nerdy valentine’s gift idea.

This “out of this whirl” design is also available on a mug, pillow, or sticker if any of those are more your valentine’s style.

If you haven’t shopped at RedBubble before, here’s a coupon for $10 of a $40 (or more) purchase! (If you use this link, you get $10 off and so do I, so thank you for adding to my sticker collection!)

You can keep it simple, and pair the “out of this whirl” gift with the matching card, or you can for something a little more personal:

It is the star alignment for the night you met or wedding date. Stellar!

Of course, there are nerdy Valentine’s gifts for children too. This “Sweet as Pi” shirt is, well, sweet!

So, I have to know. What’s your idea of a good geeky valentine’s gift?

Working with What You Have (astrophotography)

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After reading my conundrum with my astrophotography equipment, I gathered what I had and looked for a solution.

Since I’m in no way able to afford a huge tricked out scope (we got a great deal on my 8″ LX10 on craigslist!) I’m sticking with what I have. Again, there’s a tracker on my scope but it is basically a barn door tracker. It is slightly more sophisticated though, it has a controller with “North, South, East, and West” buttons on it. As long as it is perfectly polar aligned (I’ll talk about this later) all I have to do is turn it on and it’ll automatically track whatever the scope is pointed at (this is typical barn door behavior) but if I want to drive the scope to look at something to the east, I hold down the “East” button on the controller, and it will DOUBLE the speed of the motor… making 1 revolution in 12 hours instead of 24. Wow right! Not so speedy. Well, it gets better. If I want to look at something West of my current object, holding the “West” button turns the motor off completely. The telescope then simply waits for the earth to spin until that object is within view. The North and South buttons work a little differently, the scope doesn’t move either of these directions unless a button is pushed. When it is, it turns on a motor that moves **Just as slow as the tracker motor.** It can also only move in a particular North/South direction until a screw on the mount bottoms out. This limits the number of degrees of rotation I can do North to South. Typically, I set it up so that when I start viewing, I’m in the middle of the screw, which gives me just as much leeway North as South, but halves the total amount I can move the scope in any one particular direction.

All this means that there’s no way I can whip this thing around to look at whatever I want automatically like GoTo systems do.  I’ll have to unlock the clutches on each axis, then swing it manually to point at an object of interest, then lock the clutches down again and let the motors take over. I’m fine with that, but how do I know where things are in the sky? I’m not great at memorizing locations of stars and DSOs. My solution is to use a PushTo setup. A PushTo is for dumb telescopes. Basically, you attach it to your scope and it tracks where you are manually moving it to point. The best solution I’ve found for this is an app called Skeye.  It is like google sky map, except it was designed so you can mount your tablet or phone to your OTA (Optical Tube Assembly… or Tube where your mirrors and lenses are). I’ll do a tutorial on how to setup and use this as well. For now, check out this guy’s setup.

So I can find objects in the sky, how do I take good photos of them? Due to budget (none really) I have to work with what I have, I first need to make sure that:
1. I am relatively well alighed with true North. (Not perfectly aligned, but close enough and I can do this quick and dirty).
2. I manually move the scope to point at what I want to look at. (This is easy enough).
3. Use a computer to automatically control the direction of the scope for long periods of time.

That last one is a doosey. And so that’s where my adventure began a few years back. I joined the yahoo support group for LX10 owners. Luckily, some of those guys have figured out different ways to hack together store-bought systems with their LX10s. Many of them were a bit too advanced for me (I don’t own a machine shop nor and I spending several hundred dollars on buying another telescope brand’s trackers and rigging it to my system in the hopes that I don’t fry it…) A guy named gt_keys had already been looking at a simple solution to connect an LX10 to computer-based guidance systems via an arduino connection. I like this idea because it can be used with multiple kinds of computer software.

The arduino hardware and code was developed by yahoo user gt_keys in Spring 2013. You can find his threads on the LX10 yahoo group; specifically, these files come from the files section.  I’ll ask if he would put it on GitHub, or if he minds if I do so you can download it.

He has also developed a RaspberryPi version as well that seems to be more capable. Seeing as how the LX-10 is limited in the Dec and Right Ascension speeds, this arduino implementation will work fine for most things though you need to be connected to a computer of some type.

This requires a number of software packages to be installed:

  1. Arduino IDE… so you can download the firmware
  2. PHD Guidance 2 which tracks video of a star then send commands to a scope
  3. ASCOM platform which are a middle-man layer between PHD2 and whatever telescope driver you are using
  4. Meade Classic and Autostar 1 drivers (See below)
  5. Should you want to control your actual camera DSLR or astronomy webcam, some software for this. It will vary based on your particular camera, but FireCapture is one I’ve heard of for astronomy cameras like the ZWO brand or Celestion NexImage5 which I hear is good. As for a Canon, Nikon, or other brand, you can google around and find something to drive them. I’m testing out DSLRDashboard which supports many Canon and Nikon cameras.

So the hardware flow looks like this: You’ll have a USB webcam attached to your sighting scope which will feed data to a program called PHD Guider 2. See my post for how to attach a USB camera to your sighting scope. This must also have the ASCOM drivers installed which know how to talk to different telescope systems. Specifically we will need the “Meade Classic and Autostar 1” driver. (I can’t remember exactly which driver it is on the ASCOM site, but it is either this one or this one). This can be found in the settings menu of PHD2. I went through the “new equipment wizard” in PHD2 to create a group of settings for my equipment. Again, since the LX-10’s hardware is so limited, there isn’t much to enter really. There is no focus knob (though if you add one, gt_key’s arduino code seems to be able to handle it).

PHD2 will take the image from the webcam attached to your site scope and allow you to specify a particular star in the field. Once you begin tracking, PHD2 looks at how many pixels the star in your image has moved, then send the appropriate commands to move to the ASCOM drivers. These translate that command into whatever command your scope hardware requires. For instance, you might have an autoguiding Orion scope. There’s drivers for all of that stuff. In our case, the Meade LX10 doesn’t have a computer language, so gt_keys chose to use the classic Meade and Autostar 1 command set.

The ASCOM drivers send the message over your USB serial port to the arduino. gt_keys’s code reads in those commands and basically pushes the buttons on the LX-10’s hand controller electrically. The motors on the LX10 move very slow. It is literally a barn door contraption, moving a full 360 degrees in 24 hours, and if you want to drive the telescope the other direction, it just turns the motor off and waits for the earth to spin to the point you want to move to. This means that for you to get good long exposures or to track planets well enough, you have to get a relatively close polar alignment on your scope before you start. More on this in another post.
Hardware Setup:
Firstly, build the schematic as shown. I used a green relay board from Seeed studios.

Secondly, before you flash the firmware to the arduino, you have to change a value to make the hand-held controller to work. This is on line 56. You must change “const int hcontrol = 0;” to “const int hcontrol = 1;” Otherwise you cannot test this thing unless you have it all connected up to the computer, getting ASCOM commands which are generated from the PHD2 program.
Other software and options:
How to guide mount PHD:

As an alternative to PHD Guider 2, (PHD2) you can try AstroTortilla. Though I’ve never tried it,  here’s a tutorial for how to use it.
I have not tried these out, however I’ve seen them recommended several times. Comment and let me know if you love or hate any of these:
AstroImageJ is ImageJ for astronomy. ImageJ is a image processing program for scientific use that’s open sourced, Java-based and encourages lots of plugins, extensions, and macros to be built.

Astronomy.net can help calibrate your images through a web app. Really awesome to see other peoples’ shots as well. You can also have it pick out and name stars in images you upload. It is really cool. There’s a bot on reddit’s astro subreddits that automatically does this and posts the results if you submit images to that reddit. Here’s the bot’s feed  and here’s an “Ask Me anything” AMA with the author.  Oh, and the source code is completely open course too so you can hack on it if you want.

My Current Astrophotography Astronomy Setup

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This is a quick list of Equipment I have and what I want. I have yet to have the time to get any spectacular images yet, but I think I could get some good ones given some practice. This is mainly a list for myself, but in case anyone else is interested in what to get for starting out in astrophotography, here’s a reference point. My next post on this topic will likely be a description of how I plan to use this to take wicked pics of planets, nebulae, and hopefully some galaxies.

  • Meade LX-10 telescope with declination motor kit (no longer sold new, but check craigslist)
  • Hacked together arduino system for guidance
  • HD Webcam for guidance and tracking
  • Green laser pointer for pointing at stars and such to make show people what I’m talking about (pointing into the sky with your finger is useless…) Make sure there are NO aircraft in your entire field of view before using this! While they don’t make the exact one I have anymore, this one seems to be the closest I can find.
  • I have a set of spirit (bubble) levels. I like using the T-type level to level my tripod and the top of my tube when polar aligning, and I use a torpedo level to level my forks. I got all of mine at a discount hardware store and all together they costs like $8, and this included a line set level.
  • Meade 1.25″ diagonal prism
  • 26mm plossi lens
  • 2x barlow lens
  • Extension tube (Mine’s a meade, but they don’t seem to make them anymore)
  • Canon T-ring for my friend’s 5D
  • Nikon T-ring for my Fuji and Nikon
  • The book Nightwatch: A practical guide to viewing the Universe. I literally keep this in my telescope bag and bring it with me everywhere I go!
  • My Red head lamp is priceless out in the field! I love the ability to flip it up and down when I’m using it. Be aware though because it turns the white LED on first, the second time you push the button it turns on the red LEDs so hold your hand over it until the red LEDs come on to save your nightvision.
  • A must-have is this wireless shutter-release for my Nikon. It uses radio, not IR so I can literally be inside my car or house and set the thing to take an image. This is great for winter nights. It has other modes on it as well.
  • You can also use an android or iOS app called DSLRDashboard which controls your DSLR via a tablet or phone. It gives you control of pretty much all the camera settings (except manual settings such as the autofocus switches on the lenses) from a tablet or cell phone. With this, you’ll simply need a USB “On The Go” OTG cable and your camera’s USB cable. The OTG cable allows you to plug devices such as cameras, keyboards, mice, flash drives, etc. into your tablet or phone. I prefer using the 90-degree cables to keep all the cables clean and out of the way.
  • Though, I’ve really been considering getting this wireless adapter for my Nikon because it will replace the wired setup mentioned above. This will be mainly for if it is too cold for comfort.
    When I’m roughing it, and my wife won’t let me use the Nikon, I use my old Fuji DSLR. I have my manual cable release for it so I can do long exposures the old-fashioned way.
    My low-cost DIY Dew Sheild.
  • And since I mentioned it, my telescope bag didn’t cost me much.

My next purchases:

My Humble Telescope Case

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scopeIncase1You can find them for as high as $600 for a hard-shell case or for a soft-shell case, about $300. We’ve had a set of luggage my mother gave us like 10 years ago and I repurposed the largest one to carry my OTA (telescope tube). It’s dimensions were perfect. 13″deep x 18″wide x 28″ tall. I went to a craft store and got some 1.5″ foam, wrapped it in a circle and smushed it into the bag. Then I cut off the excess which left me with enough to do a top and bottom and a sliver to set on the face of the tube after I lay it in there.

insideCase1

I did have to carefully cut a slot and hole in the top piece of foam to make a pathway for the focuser knob on the scope. This is the only thing I really worry about with this setup.

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insideCase3

 

To make it look nicer and more finished, I got about 3 yards of shiny-satiny black soft fabric that I thought would be good to use and stuffed it along all the edges of the foam. I made sure to form the fabric into  the slot and hole for the focuser knob. I don’t want that snagging or to have any weight on it at all. There’s no sewing involved, simply tuck in about 1 foot of material around every edge, leaving a long extra piece hanging out the bottom.

insideCase2

Once the tube is set in place, bring this excess fabric up, fold in the sliver of left-over foam and set it on top of the OTA. Then zip up and you are ready to go. The bag has plenty of storage for accessories, although I do not keep my lenses in this bag.

pocket1pocket2

I would like to get a hard-shell case for it, but with the types of luggage available, the hard shell is very thin and I worry that it won’t hold up over time, but something like this looks a little more beefy. I’ve been looking at Ross and TJ Maxx when I happen to go to those stores, but nothing there seems to be big enough.

case1