Telescope timelapse

[peter_4059]

Decided to do another time lapse of the scope in action last night. I was expecting a clear night however clouds rolled through this morning. Good to see the cloud detector is working :)

I'm using Voyager to orchestrate everything.

https://youtu.be/749V74Of9CE

[h0ughy]

That's cool

[Stonius]

Nice! Is that a wind gauge on the right? The little arms that move every so often?

[multiweb]

That was awesome. :eyepop: Next level.
I can understand why you automated. Your sky looks like a sucker hole in the trees canopy.

[peter_4059]

Cheers Dave.


Yes. I've got an Arduino based weather monitor that is linked to Voyager. It has wind, light, cloud and rain sensors that can suspend imaging if the limits I set are exceeded.



Yep. Some targets only visible for 30mins each night so need multiple nights to get enough integration time.

[Dennis]

Wow Peter, that was an enjoyable time lapse to watch, thanks for putting this together to show what is possible.:)

Poetry in motion, as the 'scope danced to Voyager's orchestrated music.:)

I was surprised to see that the roof didn't close down when the clouds came in - do you have a rain sensor for this possibility?

Cheers

Dennis

PS - you just answered my rain question as I was writing

[peter_4059]

Hi Dennis. My roof is not automated because I need to remove the dew shield from the ota to park the scope in a position for the roof to close. The rain sensor sounds an alarm in the house which will hopefully wake me up in time :eyepop: if it starts raining. Most nights I take a look at the forecast before going to bed.

[AdamJL]

fantastic. You have taken a difficult situation (tiny view of the sky) and solved it with a great amount of skill. Well done!

[peter_4059]

Yes...I was getting nowhere with my hands on approach however it is now almost fully automated including choosing targets. That has led to a vast amount of data captured since it is running all night whenever it looks like clear weather. I've got multiple targets on the go each night with up to 20 nights on a single target by the time the imaging window for that target has passed.

[The_bluester]

Very cool to watch, the dragscript setup to have it run around multiple targets in a night must be a godsend for you. That is a tiny patch of sky to work with.


Are you using localfield or Robostar/V curve focusing? I was thinking I might see it periodically jump off and back again for Robostar.

[peter_4059]

I'm using localfield focus. The only time it moves is to acquire the next target. When there is nothing to image it sits stationary at alt/az 50/50. For cloud it moves to home position.

[RobF]

Wonderful stuff Peter. Was interesting watching it cope with the clouds coming through on and off. Fog this morning was spooky and unusual for Brissie.....

How do you find the data taken over many nights - is it any harder to process? I'd imagine any sky gradients would be fairly constant given you're always imaging towards same spot in the sky.

[peter_4059]

Hi Rob. I'm finding more subs easier to process and DBE seems to manage the gradients quite well.