Astro Gear

 

Wato's Droid repair shop

Some fun over the weekend, fixed an R2D2 thinkways robot with a chattery ticker.
what was the worst that could happen....

repair fault finding

Function and movement test success...

Exploring Elite Dangerous Distant Worlds 2

While heading out to center of the ED DW2 galaxy, following the fleet in solo mode.
I explored enough planets to become an exploration rank of Ranger.

 This is my first discovery of a complete system and mapped for the codex...

Elite dangerous rock destroyer

Today I broke apart my first asteriod in Elite dangerous.
It yielded 1 unit of Musgravite which i promptly sold fr approx  320k cr.
 Oooh I like this game even more now with the new exploration and mining mechanics....

STEREO HI1A sees Comet C/2018 V1 (Machholz-Fujikawa-Iwamoto)

This new comet ground discovered independently by three comet hunters using there own equipment was seen recently in STEREO Hi1a images across 20181120-24 

Comet C/2018 V1 (Machholz-Fujikawa-Iwamoto)

images processed and enlarged from public fits images by me...

The general location in HI1a images....

SNPPV7 location view when at STEREO HI1A....

ED stuff

Samsung G8 astro camera

The newer smart phones now have greater control over various camera setting, like ISO, EXP, and more importantly duration. These now mega pixel cameras can show wide field views of the sky.
Like these.

[acrux]

[scorpius]

These are approximately 70 x 50 degrees FOV, or a 45 degree radial from the center of the field.
So what is it good for, well I can see omega centauri and stars down to mag 6. It should catch bright satellites and perchance a bright meteor.

The second phase of this project, was to boggee into the phone case a Star Analyzer 100 grating.
Like this,
[ phone case]

To do this,
[lighs]

While still working on getting focus, the results look like this,
[acrux spectrum]

[scorpius spectrun]

So the next steps is,
 to refine focus,
 try out on a guided mount for better noise reduction,

A Quick how to here......

Then figure out how many phones it take to cover the whole sky.
An lastly figure out how to make the phone tweet a picture on a detected brightness change in any FOV. As it could be plane, satellite, or meteor.....the tweeteor project ...8)

Comet 45P in STEREO HI1A

Here is a different point of view of Comet 45P now passing between Earth and the STEREO HI1A satellite imager....every  body look up and wave....

Radio Meteors with small equipment ???

listing to a cw wave and hearing varying and intermittent power fluctuations.

 look like this...
sounds like this...
radio pings....across approx one hour

Rough Dressler Antenna

I have been using an RTL-SDR to listen for meteors and other signals for a while. With just the supplied little stick antenna. A few efforts to make a DISCONE  and a cheap YAGI failed to complete.

So, when I saw this design,( active-wideband-receiver-antenna-for-sdr article) originally built with copper foil. I tried to make one out of 0.5mm sheet aluminium. I added a 20mm fold point on the long end and 50mm tab on the bottom of the short end. The fold helps to lock in the sheet for a good roll on the 80mm inner tube. The tab folds under the tube and lock the bottom section down. A crimp connection can be made using the tab to attached the cable lead.

I tried it only with a connection directly to the RTL-SDR ( NOOOLEC GREEN NANO) which was connected to the PC using an USB powered 5M extension. Signal and noise levels all rose quite a bit. Next to find a good LNA and see if things get any better,

  

Pluto

New Horizon will make closest approach in next six hours, so download some of the LORRI images from the JPL web site. And used ImageJ to make some features visible....

Update - 20150715 11:00 am local AEST
New horizons has survived it's flyby of Pluto, now waiting for all the good data to slowly download.
Heading for the home of the comets.......

Comet Master

This new comet is finally rising in my evening skies. So, a small effort to recorded it from my backyard....A faint tail is seen...

20150519

Update 20150519 -  A colorful comet.....