llanitedave
Humble Megalomaniac
Reged: 09/26/05
Posts: 10411
Loc: Amargosa Valley, NV, USA
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The warning, of course, is an indication that we need to support efforts to develop more reserves. This is true for a large number of relatively unknown but vital metal and mineral resources. A lot of people don't like the mining industry, and would be happy (for a short while) if all the mines were shut down, but when society shuts down as a result, they're likely to change their minds.
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"S.O.E." (Sauron's Other Eye) 16" Royce conical mirror: A permanent work in progress.
10" Homebuilt dob, old Coulter mirror
Next Project: The "Eye of Sauron" Observatory!
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jayscheuerle
Carpal Tunnel
Reged: 01/16/06
Posts: 2947
Loc: S. Philadelphia, PA
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So the next ATM revolution has to do with oil reserves?...
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12" Green Goblin (trusser w/Protstar secondary and OWL refigured primary) 6" f/5 Eero2 ball-scope 6" f/5 Frankenscope Garrett Optical 10x50 binos Edmund 8" yoke-mounted red-tube reflector Edmund 6" GEQ red-tube reflector (on loan to Dad)
Gone, but with lessons learned:
Skyquest XT8 NexSTar 8i Eeroscope 6" f/5 ball(sacrifice was not in vain) Vixen ED80sf Edmund red-tube 4.25" f/10 Edmund Astroscan
Facts are stubborn things.
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Michael Miles
professor emeritus
Reged: 02/11/05
Posts: 600
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Quote:
...Just try not to pick up any chest-busting alien embryos while you're at it, OK Ripley?
Jess Tauber
Actually, chest-bursting aliens adapted to gestating in our biochemistry would imply common origins with earth organisms, and would be VERY interesting scientifically.
Some might argue well worth the lives of a few B-list actors...
Michael Miles (film director)
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LXD-75 w/
Stellarvue 102ED
Hardin 10" Newt
Antares 8" Newt
Meade AR-5
Meade N-6
Celestron 102mm refractor
Canon 300D, Meade DSI guiding
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randtek
professor emeritus
Reged: 06/18/05
Posts: 684
Loc: Central Indiana
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[quote. . . Or a similar idea, detecting eye movements to automatically center the scope on the part of the image that is drawing our attention. This would make guiding and exploring an entirely intuitive process.
Sounds like a cool idea, although it would probably make using averted vision a little tough! 
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Randy
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
George Bernard Shaw
SkyQuest XT10
Homebuilt Surplus Shed 102mm f8.8 refractor (still under construction-OTA done, mount in work)
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refractory
Pooh-Bah
Reged: 02/05/05
Posts: 1014
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Awful hard to tie in Sci-Fi movie aliens to ATMing, BUT there WAS that alien navigator in the derelict spaceship, looking like he was GROWN into the chair. Was what looked like his telescope also grown?
THAT would be a revolution (ATM via ATP....?).
Jess Tauber
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gatorengineer
professor emeritus
Reged: 02/28/05
Posts: 725
Loc: Hellertown, PA
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I think this one is a softball so lets hit it.
Chinese Cellular Mirror blanks. Lets say a 20 inch blank for $500, that weighs 25 lbs.... And GSO sells a finished mirror for $1800....
After that it will be the version of the atlas with Harmonic drives, like the chronos mount, made in china carries 125 lbs for $2k....
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16" & 20" Dobs
4" Triplet Refractor
10" LX200R OTA
8"F20 Dall Kirkham
12.5" F3.5 Newt
CGE
Lots of binos---
Nikon 8x30, 10x35, Prostars,10W/18 x 70 astrolux; 10x50 Fujis. Collectors items 12x60 BLC, 10x80 Flaks, Gas Masks, US Mark 28, 30, 41, 43's
Telescopes Past - 8" Stf Mak, C8, Meade LX10-10", SN8, TAL150K, Orion 150MC, Jason 60mm refractor, ATM 6" F8, WO 110FLT, 92mm Off Axis Newt, Nikon 20x120 bino's, 15x110 Boarderguards, Kuhne Flaks
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kfrederick
sage
Reged: 02/01/08
Posts: 212
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i think it would be cool if people started to make there own optics like in the old days and mirror grinding clubs would start up/ that i what atm i about/ not buying a cheep mirror from over seas and puting it in a tube / grinding a mirror is a lot of fun and if there was a nearby club for help you could have even more fun/ it i great when you use a mirror you made and it works good kevin
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Crab
super member
Reged: 02/23/05
Posts: 111
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Revolution makes me think of a large number of people participating. So I assume that any revolution will involve some simplification and lower cost for the same or better utility.
Strangely enough one possible revolution may be Mel Bartel's scopedrive which has been around for years. I believe that scopedrive has been limited by the requirement of two computers and large full circumference bearings. Combine a small cheap low wattage Intel Atom board with a bluetooth handheld and you now have a compact and affordable electronics package.
Edit to add that the intel board would be headless with no keyboard. Scopedrive would be configured to startup at boot. Mini-itx boards are about 7 inches square and Mel bartel's board is similar in size so this part of the package could be contained within an 8x8x4 inch box attached to the mount. If Intel does a nano sized board then the package could be smaller as there is already a more compact design of Mel's controller board available.
Replace the full circumference bearings with sectors moved by screw driven blocks and you now have an affordable solution that is geared down to the point where stepper vibration is easily controlled. This would require a slip clutch and encoders. Such a mount concept would be a hybrid push-to/go-to. You would push the scope close to the target then activate the go-to so the motors do the fine positioning and tracking. Stiction wouldn't matter this way. It could serve reflectors,refractors and cats. Not as simple as a dob but simpler than an equatorial with flexibility and lower cost for the utility.
Edited by Crab (08/18/08 11:38 AM)
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George N
sage
Reged: 05/19/06
Posts: 296
Loc: Binghamton & Indian Lake NY
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Quote:
[quote. . . Or a similar idea, detecting eye movements to automatically center the scope on the part of the image that is drawing our attention. This would make guiding and exploring an entirely intuitive process.
Sounds like a cool idea, although it would probably make using averted vision a little tough!
Thats how the targeting system in the Apache attack helicopter works. The gun points were ever the gunner is looking. The computer system even predicts where the gunner is likely to stop his/her eye movement. If you try and make something similar you will probably get visits from Homeland Security and a bunch of patent infringement law suits.
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George N
Obsession 20
Optical Guidance Systems 10" F/9 R-C Cass
6" F/5 & 8" F/8 home-made Newts
MI-250 mount
SBIG STL-1301E CCD
Member, International Dark-Sky Association
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jdownie
professor emeritus
Reged: 02/24/06
Posts: 721
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In general, patents are not an issue for the ATM.
John
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ATM project - a terrible waste of good Pyrex.
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mark cowan
Vendor (Obsidian Optics)
Reged: 06/03/05
Posts: 1365
Loc: salem, OR
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Quote:
Strangely enough one possible revolution may be Mel Bartel's scopedrive which has been around for years. I believe that scopedrive has been limited by the requirement of two computers and large full circumference bearings. Combine a small cheap low wattage Intel Atom board with a bluetooth handheld and you now have a compact and affordable electronics package.
In a nod to cheep ATMing let me point out that that software runs on the ubiquitous $20 laptop (n86 where n is 4 or less) under DOS and requires a parallel port to output the timing signals for the steppers to simple transistor circuitry to drive the 2 or 3 steppers (also handles field derotation).
Ie, one obsolete computer and a handful of parts...
Best,
Mark
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Crab
super member
Reged: 02/23/05
Posts: 111
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My apologies, I was confused by discussions of using a dedicated dos box to control the motors. It does only require one. Using two is a good idea though as it frees you from worry about timing issues when using operating systems newer than dos in order to run more capable planetarium programs.
Old laptops are cheap but their running cost can be high as a laptop draws more juice than some newer boards. I believe that Mel Bartels recommends more than a 486 nowadays when microstepping. Here's a link to the type of board I'm discussing.
http://store.microcom.us/alix1c.html
Run it headless with the software in ramdrive and it is very low power draw. Add that the use of sectors eliminates slewing and the battery requirements drop from that as well. There is already interest in controlling a Bartelized scope using a bluetooth enabled cellphone though I don't know if any progress has been made.
My hope is that the progress in low power computing will lead to the crossing of a threshold where a bartels solution is attractive to large numbers of people. I believe that full circumference bearings will have to be abandoned for this to happen as full bearings involve satisfying a number of requirements which turns out to be somewhat complicated. Sectors may seem more complex but they have the potential to simplify things significantly.
I don't like the idea of using a laptop in the field and this is probably a deterrent to others as well.
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Crab
super member
Reged: 02/23/05
Posts: 111
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In case it isn't obvious the solution that may come about would have all boards and batteries on the scope with no wires off the scope. Scopedrive can also control an electronic focuser so it would be all controls except slewing through a bluetooth handheld.
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mark cowan
Vendor (Obsidian Optics)
Reged: 06/03/05
Posts: 1365
Loc: salem, OR
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Whoa, there are operating systems newer than DOS?  Cheap laptop = nearly disposable.  The computing load is very minimal, certainly 586s are everywhere. I see your point though. I'd rather have the main power load be for the motors.
IIRC there's a Linux port available as well, the main requirement is that you have a real-time OS, though there are ways to sort of get mostly around such timing issues in Windows, almost.
In any case, of course you can use different controllers and that wouldn't be a bad thing. My preference for goto/tracking systems includes a planetarium as well. What Mel's system does (I've read the code) is implement the motor phasing control in software and thus allow direct driving of the steppers (with that transistor interface I mentioned).
I'm sorry but I don't what you mean by "full circumference bearings." I agree that all the electronics save the bluetooth I/F can be scope mounted. No reason not to have slewing though. Seeing a full driven scope in action while meandering along a planetarium display is insanely fun.
Best,
Mark
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Crab
super member
Reged: 02/23/05
Posts: 111
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when I looked into bartelizing a scope it would have required gearing the motor down in order to have the recommended amount of motion while tracking if using a roller drive. This is why people are interested in worm gears. When a worm gear is used then slewing is slow. If the scope I was considering was twice as large then roller bearings would have worked within Mel Bartels recommendations. The solution I arrived at was to use sectors and hand slew. I haven't implemented that solution as I have been waiting for low power computers as a laptop in the field is a showstopper for me. So the incentive for using sectors instead of a full circumference drive is that the need for speed while slewing combined with the need for very fine steps while tracking is difficult to satisfy with a roller based drive mechanism when applied to smaller scopes.
When mentioning a full circumference solution I'm talking about the azimuth. The alt is less than a full circle of course.
The board linked above draws between 4 and 5 watts, storage draw included. I haven't found a cheap laptop that gets close to this. Some laptops have built in power saving features that interfere with scopedrive. If you toss your laptop and replace it with a different model then you may have to re-time everything.
Motored slewing if great but one with sectors and hand slewing should make timing the microstepping a forgiving process. Buying a cheap board is simpler than buying a used laptop where documentation may be sparse and everything may not work. The battery most likely won't.
There is a reason that the majority of people haven't bartelized their scopes.Maybe what I'm talking about won't happen but I believe that any revolution will be a down to earth nuts and bolts sort of thing.
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mark cowan
Vendor (Obsidian Optics)
Reged: 06/03/05
Posts: 1365
Loc: salem, OR
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Quote:
There is a reason that the majority of people haven't bartelized their scopes.
Yes there is, it's not simple! To do it right it's best if you designed it that way from the beginning, the balance and particularly the bearings - as you need roller bearings in place of teflon to make it work.
Quote:
When mentioning a full circumference solution I'm talking about the azimuth. The alt is less than a full circle of course.
How does that relate to what you're talking about, though? Sector (worm) drives are just another way of coupling the motor to the axis. Slewing speed with a roller drive and encoders on both axis shouldn't matter as you just hand slew and let it fine tune the position as needed. Microstepping on rollers with gear reduction should suit any size you cared to motorize...
Best,
Mark
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kfrederick
sage
Reged: 02/01/08
Posts: 212
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i think the telescopes in the years to come are going to be bigger faster with thiner mirrors
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