In putting the link in – somehow I got rid of all the text – how boring. So I’ll try again. The link below should take you to an animation of the inverse nova R Coronae Borealis as it goes from maximum to minimum magnitude. R Coronae Borealis is also a Carbon star (it is the massive amounts of ejected Carbon that cause this periodic dimming).
https://epod.usra.edu/.a/6a0105371bb32c970b02c8d3bd1c2c200c-pi
This morning I built up a switch box with 12V display meter to bolt onto the 12V 20A PSU for the dome rotator. All wired up – taken out to the observatory – connected up to the dome rotator black box – powered up – AND – everything worked perfectly 🙂 So I am now ready for this season’s imaging once the interfering Moon has moved on.
Thank you Tom How and Peter Dossett for tracking down the fault with the dome rotator – I am all ready for some imaging again 🙂 What I would like to get immediately (Moon and weather permitting) is a 3 frame mosaic using the 200mm lenses covering the whole of the constellation Sagitta (plus M71) AND the Coathanger Cluster. Should make a great image if I can capture it.
From mid-day tomorrow the New Forest Observatory will have its own YouTube channel.
This week we look right into the bright core of the Orion nebula to see the famous Trapezium group of stars. For me this is a rare image as it is clearly not taken with a Hyperstar or a Sky90. This is one of very few images I took back in the early days using the Celestron Nexstar 11 GPS at f#10 with the tiny little H9C OSC CCD! I only came across this long lost image very recently and did a tiny bit of tidying up in Photoshop before presenting here.
At the beginning of each month – starting with October 1st 2024 – there will be something new for you from the NFO. Make sure you log onto the NFO this October 1st to see what will be on offer.
A few weeks back the MiniWASP dome rotator decided to give up on me. My electronics was not up to the job of sorting the problem out, so I brought in the software and hardware experts who originally put the system together, Peter Dossett and Tom How.
These guys gave up their Saturday morning to come over to the New Forest Observatory and sort out the problem for me. It didn’t take them very long at all to zero in on the high current 12V power supply (basically a computer PSU) as being the problem. Very strange because the original computer PSU I used lasted 12 years without a glitch. The original PSU died on me so I replaced it with another one which seemed to drive the steppers for a while and then the steppers stopped working although the PSU seemed o.k. As it turned out the PSU was not o.k. and for some reason, after working perfectly well for a while, it decided it did not like to see an inductive load. Fortunately I had a spare 12V 20A PSU for the 3D printer (used specifically for inductive loads) and this replaced the computer PSU. Everything then worked again as it should!!
Tom & Pete suggested I shut the whole system down and start up again from scratch (very good idea) just to check it was working properly, and not tricking us – and fortunately it did fire up, with no issues.
So, the MiniWASP array is once again fully functional thanks to Tom & Pete’s efforts, and I am ready to tackle this season’s objects – weather permitting. But the very first job is to get the collimation back on the 200mm lenses, which for some unknown reason has changed over the last 6 months. It’s a never-ending job running an observatory!
Earlier I showed that not only can I offer astro-prints but also macros, micros, high-speed photography, landscape & Nature photography, and I completely forgot mathematical and fractal objects.
I can offer prints of any mathematical object (that can be described by an equation), prints of fractal objects of all kinds, and prints of constants (like Pi, e, Golden Ratio, I^I, etc.) to 10,000 decimal places.
If you are a mathematician or interested in all things mathematical and want a truly unique mathematical print for your wall, then just comment at the bottom of this post.
The Virgo/Coma cluster of galaxies in negative B&W for easier viewing. This is a combination of a 12-frame mosaic taken with the original Hyperstar and H9C OSC CCD, and a 2-frame mosaic using the 200mm lenses and M26C OSC CCDs. This image contains 13 Messier objects.
But it isn’t quite as simple as that is it?
The fact that our mathematics doesn’t allow for an Absolute Infinite doesn’t mean that there isn’t a God that transcends our feeble mathematics and is of Absolute Infinite extent!
In fact it would make perfect sense if God WAS the Absolute Infinite as that would ensure we have no chance in understanding what God is.
Has actually been answered by Bertrand Russell.
If you have seen my past ramblings on this subject then you will have read that I concluded that God would exist if the Absolute Infinite existed, and I left it there. I left it there because I didn’t have a clue (or so I thought) whether the Absolute Infinite existed or not, and then, just a few days ago, the Russell Paradox came to mind.
Russell showed that there is no set of all sets. Oops. I knew this from my Uni days back in 1975 but thought no more about it. But thinking on it some 50 years later I think Russell has actually provided the answer to the BIG question.
If there is no set of all sets (Russell)
Then there is no Absolute Infinite
Then God does not exist (Cantor)
I believe that Godel “proved” that God DID exist by some logical argument. It’s a shame that he did not use a mathematical argument instead or he might just have come up with a different answer.
