The sky tonight from my garden

[John Mills]

)

I've been doing repairs on a Starlight Xpress Oculus skycam  (not mine sadly!

and finally got it running. Here's an image from outside the backdoor of my workshop. Its too near the house, so lose quite a bit of sky. I'll see if I can get it past the roof and get a full 360 degree image.

Cheers John

[JR]

That's really good John.  It's an image to enjoy and lose yourself in, looking for constellations and so on, and the Milky Way tops it off.  

I'm trying to work out where Mars is and if there's any sign of the Great Conjunction as I think the chances of eyeballing it in the SE are roughly nil.   Leave it a week and then let us have an annotated version 🙂

I'm casting my vote for keeping the foreground roof line.   It doesn't intrude much and IMHO that sort of thing adds context which somehow lifts these types of image far more than you lose.

Where did you get such a clear sky and how long are the exposures.

James

Sent from my iPad

On 18 Dec 2020, at 02:38, John Mills <ejm...@millseyspages.com> wrote:



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<skycam.jpg>

[Roy Easto]

Hi John,

That looks great. I'm hoping to get an Oculus Quest 2 soon and will be really interested in these sorts of visualisations.

Roy

[John Mills]

Hi James,

As for the clear sky... At my place at 300mtrs ASL and on the east side
of the island it can be a rare site! Being at Lat 28.5 degrees north
helps also.

That was a 40s exposure. Any much longer and the stars begin to trail.
I'm still playing with it before returning the skycam to the owner.
Seems the problem was a faulty USB cable, so looks like that has to be
changed at the remote observatory. The guy who runs all this kit is
Kevin Hills (a BAA member) who specialises in comet and asteroid
observations. He lives near Manchester and can set up an observing
session via his smartphone!

The skycam can take individual images or left in continuous mode. The
raw data (FIT files) can be converted into .AVI files so a video can be
made of conditions during the night.

I reckon I can tweak the focus a bit better and get the camera higher
up. I lose about 2/3rds of the sky putting on a normal camera tripod and
sticking outside the backdoor!

The big conjuction with Jupiter and Saturn I think is on the 21st Dec.
Also Mars is quite prominent.

I'll post some more images when conditions allow. Its gone a bit cloudy
at the moment!

Regards John

On 18/12/2020 08:15, 'JR' via croydonastro wrote:
> That's really good John.  It's an image to enjoy and lose yourself in,
> looking for constellations and so on, and the Milky Way tops it off.
>
> I'm trying to work out where Mars is and if there's any sign of the
> Great Conjunction as I think the chances of eyeballing it in the SE are
> roughly nil.   Leave it a week and then let us have an annotated version 🙂
>
> I'm casting my vote for keeping the foreground roof line.   It doesn't
> intrude much and IMHO that sort of thing adds context which somehow
> lifts these types of image far more than you lose.
>
> Where did you get such a clear sky and how long are the exposures.
>
> James
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
>> On 18 Dec 2020, at 02:38, John Mills <ejm...@millseyspages.com> wrote:
>>
>> 
>>
>> <skycam.jpg>
>> )
>>
>> I've been doing repairs on a Starlight Xpress Oculus skycam  (not mine
>> sadly!
>> and finally got it running. Here's an image from outside the backdoor
>> of my workshop. Its too near the house, so lose quite a bit of sky.
>> I'll see if I can get it past the roof and get a full 360 degree image.
>>
>> Cheers John

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[Trev S]

Nice dark skies John.  Can this camera be used for cloud detection and observatory control?

[William Bottaci]

Hello John, a pleasing image of the night sky.

Whilst we see, and even take, many 'high magnification/small field' views, this gives a good representation of being under a starlit sky. Also reminds me of a planisphere.

Keep up the good work, William