This is the weblog of Brian Curd. A lot of it is written on the spur of the moment and any benefit you gain from it is worth exactly what you paid!
Using the setup described below in my last post, I have now started exploring the world of astrophotography and my first attempt is shown below. To say I am pleased with it is a bit of an understatement! The original images were captured as a .mov file on a Mac laptop and then processed by [...]
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Filed under: Astronomy, Hardware, Hobbies, Isle of Wight, Photography, Software, Techie
I was given a Samsung SDN-520PH CCTV camera sometime ago – thanks Mark! . It was brand new and still in its box, it is just like the one below except that mine came with no lens. I thought it might come in handy at some point for a little astronomical experimentation. That hasn’t happened [...]
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Filed under: Astronomy, Hardware, Home, Isle of Wight, Photography, Software, Techie
The nearest star to the Earth is the Sun which is about 150,000,000 km (150 million) away. The next nearest star is Proxima Centauri at about 40,000,000,000,000 km (40 million, million) It takes about 8.5 minutes for light from the Sun to reach us. It takes about 4.2 years for light from Proxima Centauri.
I’ve just spent hours trying to attach a 42″ LG LCD TV to a computer and getting it to work as it should. Finally it works! The big problem was getting it to display with its full resolution; as it’s a full HD device the vertical should have been 1080 and the supplied datasheet showed [...]
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Filed under: Astronomy, Hardware, Hobbies, Techie
After a plaintive cry for help in the local media, yesterday I visited Keith just along the road from me. He had been having problems with his wireless broadband connection and I’d offered to help solve them. Turned out to be down to a Netgear configuration programme being used instead of the Zero Configuration thing [...]
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Filed under: Astronomy, Hardware, Hobbies, Isle of Wight, Software, Techie
These three fantastic pictures were taken from Brighstone during the recent Isle of Wight Star Party – they show what can be acheived if we can manage to keep our beautifully dark skies. Click a pic (and keep clicking for the Hi-Res versions) Details of the equipment used and the various exposure information is included [...]
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Filed under: Astronomy, Hardware, Hobbies, Isle of Wight, Photography, Software, Techie
Had a great long weekend out at Brighstone at the IOW Star Party. Loads of good friends, brilliantly (?) dark skies and wonderful viewing – I even won a prize in the raffle – now it’s time to sleep! Got to bed at about 2am Fri, 4am Saturday and 3am this morning (still on GMT) [...]
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Filed under: Astronomy, Hardware, Hobbies, Isle of Wight, Photography
Over on the right of my homepage you can hopefully see the output from a streaming webcam. For now, I am experimenting with it connected to a telescope to get in close to a bird feeder in the garden. Eventually I hope to use the thing for astronomy but before making any permanent mods to [...]
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Filed under: Astronomy, Hardware, Hobbies, Home, Isle of Wight, Photography, Techie
On Saturday 28 March 2009 at 8.30pm, people, businesses and iconic buildings around the world will switch off their lights for an hour – World Wildlife Fund’s Earth Hour. The WWF want a billion people around the world to sign up and switch off their lights for one hour. If they achieve their billion people [...]
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Filed under: Astronomy, Hobbies, Isle of Wight, Politics, Scams
I thought it was only right to mention this as it’s International Year of Astronomy: OK, so some of the quoted numbers aren’t quite right but it sums things up pretty well I think….
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Filed under: Astronomy, Funny, Hobbies
