RE: The Robot Astronomer

m.ratcliffe — Mon, 09 Nov 2015 14:02:53 GMT

Sounds like a great project.

RE: The Robot Astronomer

DAB — Mon, 22 Jun 2015 19:19:47 GMT

I used to do a fair bit of astronomy before I got disabled.

I spent many a clear night just scanning the cosmos and enjoying the show.

I got to see Halley's comment back in 1986. I had a bunch of people over at 3:00 AM so I could show them where to find it.

There were better comets since, but given that I will never see it again, Halley's remains special.

DAB

RE: The Robot Astronomer

waelect — Mon, 22 Jun 2015 08:58:23 GMT

Hi David,

I already do astro-photography and the current system you are trying to make will not be able to take Deep Sky photos, maybe planetary. The main thing is Alt/Az mounting arrangement is mainly used for visual observing.

To consider taking photographs, you will need to use the EQ mount design methodology. This requires taking your current GPS reference to get the rotation angle correct. There are already 3 current design methods

1 - EQ mounts many of them manufactured and used quite a lot by most people. I use and EQ5 with software that is freely available.

2 - EQ Platform, Used for larger scopes mostly dobsonians and very much used for the really large scopes. I also have a DOB as well and built a simple EQ Platform a couple of years ago with great success.

3 - Horseshoe mounts - This design I will be using to replace my EQ Platform more for better accuracy. They are though very large and cumbersome mounts.

As an example this galaxy shot cannot be done at all on a ALT/AZ mount - https://goo.gl/photos/BqbcDgbmLaUg46D76

This photo was taken on my EQ platform a few years ago. - https://goo.gl/photos/sLwNbVbQXHoXTPp46 I pulled it apart as I have moved house and it was crushed during the move.

The EQ mount worked well for my planetary images but was limited in some aspects - https://goo.gl/photos/J6aW1rEbiN1gxcm68 , and https://goo.gl/photos/Z7MjXLxm27eC7Xfn9

For the exercise though it is a great project though, I hope to have fun with the horseshoe mount, but I have to put my observatory together after moving recently.

RE: The Robot Astronomer

dougw — Mon, 22 Jun 2015 04:46:12 GMT

cool project - very ambitious - I expect you will learn a lot - good luck