Here is the Type I Curta calculator that was sent from the States last week (arrived today after a week’s delay in Customs). This is an August 1956 version and is in near mint condition. Done a few multiplications on it – works a treat, purrs away as you turn the handle. Pure magic 🙂 🙂
What’s really nice about the Curta calculator is that by thinking about the maths problem you want to solve in a logical manner you can minimise the number of handle rotations to calculate the answer. So for example, finding the answer to 9×9, 99×99, 999×999, 9999×9999, 99999×99999, 999999×999999, or 9999999×9999999 all only take two handle rotations to get to the answer. But it gets even better than that. The Curta’s reign as calculator supremo of course came to an end with the advent of the electronic pocket calculator, but now look again at that last calculation in the set above. The answer the Curta (Type II) gave me to 9999999×9999999 was 99999980000001 which as you note is a 14-digit number. Now go and check on my (not inexpensive all-singing and dancing) electronic calculator and what happens? Can’t supply me with all the significant digits can it! Gives me 9.999998E+13 as an answer – not as accurate as the Curta! WOW! Actually have to go to the computer and run Mathematica to get the full run of significant digits – so there you go. O.K. so my electronic calculator can give me square roots, trig functions, and all the other fancy stuff at the press of a button – but my pocket difference engine can supply me with more significant digits in two handle rotations. Now just how cool is that?
Gaze and weep at this engineering beauty. And remember, this was made in the days before CNC equipment!!! Arrived this morning, courtesy of E-Bay 🙂 🙂
Got today’s EPOD with the Algol/Rho Persei image from a while back 🙂 Thank you Jim for continuing to publish my work from the New Forest Observatory.
Took this test image of the Vega region using both Sky 90s and both M26C cameras on the mini-WASP array. One camera is not as well set up (collimation, chip flatness) as the other, but I just wanted to see if the system as a while was working as expected – fortunately it was 🙂
We have a field of view of 3.26 x 4.24 degrees and a sampling of 3.05 arc seconds per pixel. Now a 2-framer will give me an incredible 6 x 4 degrees and a 4-framer an unbelievable 6 x 8 degrees. Things are going to get extremely interesting at the New Forest Observatory this imaging season 🙂
Image expertly processed and stitched by Noel Carboni – took a fair bit of work by Noel to get things nicely matched together. Also showed us some questionable artefacts on camera 1 which I will have to take a look at very shortly.
This month’s Image of the Month is this incredible capture of M51 by American deep-sky imager Bud Guinn taken from his New Mexico remote observatory. Beautiful image Bud 🙂
Simon Parkin showed the recent Crescent nebula with Carbon star image on tonight’s Meridian Weather 🙂
And here’s that recent Kappa Cassiopeia data expertly processed by Noel Carboni.
Whilst working on the mini-WASP array last night I took a quick image of a reasonably bright star with the one good scope and camera. The central star is Kappa Cassiopeia and the two open clusters above it are NGC 146 (on the left) and NGC 133 (on the right). This is just 4 x 15-minute subs.
Took a look outside around 11:00 p.m. to see that we had really nice clear skies – that was unexpected. Can’t let a clear sky go to waste so I went out for an evening’s work tuning up the mini-WASP array. Finished at 3:30 a.m. so don’t feel too good writing this up. Been going round the houses on this last bit of flattening the camera chip to the optical axis and getting the camera collimated to the scope. But 4 and a half hours of playing with the system last night I am just about starting to understand what needs to be done to tweak this one to its best performance. It’s a bit different to what I’ve been used to using the Sky 90s, but then again I think I have been lucky rather than knowing exactly what I’ve been doing. Fingers crossed the next tuning session should see the job completed and I’ll be able to start some decent 2-frame mini-WASP imaging shortly. The first target is likely to be my old favourite M31 – but in narrowband as well as RGB 🙂
