Tag: Astronomy

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Arduino

Building an inexpensive lux meter for the observatory…

mjmazurLeave a Comment on Building an inexpensive lux meter for the observatory…

As part of an environmental monitoring system for an observatory, I wanted to include a measure of ambient light. Ostensibly, this is for safety reasons. However, I must admit that I really just want to see if I can (coarsely) measure sky brightness. There are a number of inexpensive light sensors available from AliExpress/Amazon. The two that I show here are based on the TEMT6000 sensor and the LM393 voltage comparator. Both cost less than $1.50. Hooking up the sensors…

3D printing

Building a network-connected cloud sensor (MKI)

mjmazurLeave a Comment on Building a network-connected cloud sensor (MKI)

I’ve wanted to build a cloud sensor for years now, but never actually found the time to do it. So, after seeing IR sensors for something on the order of $5 a piece, I ordered a couple and thought that I’d give it a shot. This has undoubtedly been done by lots of other people, but I thought that I’d share some simple instructions on how to build your own. The theory We could get in to the theory of blackbodies (maybe later), but it is sufficient to say that… Clouds are warmer than a clear sky. The infrared spectrum of an object can tells us something about its temperature. If you can measure the temperature of the sky, you should be able to say something about whether it’s cloud-free or not. To measure the temperature we need some sort of contact-less thermometer that can be pointed at the sky (and ground, more on that later). What you need 2x…

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3D printing

A cheap, low-light IP finder ‘scope’

mjmazurLeave a Comment on A cheap, low-light IP finder ‘scope’

My academic work focuses on meteors. Visual (and sometimes radar) observations of faint meteors. For this, the general requirement is a sensitive video-rate camera with a moderate field-of-view. The traditional solution (after eyes, photograpic plates, vidicon, etc. ) was to use an analogue security camera with low-light sensitivity. For many years, this was the Watec 902 series. They are good with resolutions of 720 lines on an (up to) 1/2″ CCD chip. Their sensitivity is estimated at down to levels…