Project 78 rpm

Published by ched on May 11th, 2012

A couple of weeks ago I was clearing out my parents loft and found a box of very old 78′s. These are recordings pressed onto 12 inch discs made from either shellac or vinyl dating back from the 1930′s onwards. My dad said “hey son, do you want these?” to which I replied that I had nothing to play them with. “That’s o.k, have a look a bit further back in the loft” and grinned at me.
Sure enough I found some really old playback equipment that he assures me worked when he packed it up in the loft some 30 years ago. I got it home and tried to set everything up as he instructed but unfortunately most of the interconnecting cables are missing and the mains connections look a bit touch and go.

Below are a few photos I took of the equipment;

above is the box of records

 

above is one of the recordings measuring 12 inches in diameter and approx 1/4 inch thick.

 

Above is another of the discs with it’s protective sleeve removed

The equipment I have retrieved that can supposedly play back the contents of these discs was manufactured around 40 years ago from various parts of England ( U.k )   The turntable was made in the West Midlands around 1973 by a company called “Birmingham Sound Reproducers” also known as BSR McDonald at it’s factory in Stourbridge.  The model number is TDPMP60.  Below is a photo of the unit I have and it does appear to have a lever that will move to the 78 position;

And below is a picture of the amplifier I have. It is an Amstrad IC 2000 MK ii dated around 1973 and incorporates the rather esoteric “Quadrosound” feature.

Unfortunately the connectors between the two units use DIN connectors. These are rather arcane but I have managed to get hold of some plugs and cables from Maplins so I will be building the cables to hook them up shortly. As soon as I have found out the pin specs I will update this thread and let you know if the units power up :-)

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New Videos section

Published by ched on April 22nd, 2012

I just started updating the Videos section of Digital Rust starting with studio video filmed under controlled conditions. Most of these are music videos including Adrenaline and Diamond Head with a couple of experimental shoots with Emma Skipp. Hope you like :-)

http://www.digitalrust.co.uk/studio-.html

 

I have loads of live videos we made to install that I will sort out as soon as possible.

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Failure – Messier 95 – 21/03/12

Published by ched on March 21st, 2012

My plan was to try and locate the Supernova in M95 tonight. I set everything up as normal and after getting a really good focus slewed the telescope to M 95.

I did a couple of trial 60 second exposures just to see where it would fit in the camera frame. I tweaked it a little to centre it in my camera frame and then switched on the guide camera.

Sadly I could not pick out a single star, I upped the exposure time to around 4 seconds and tried it again using the QHY5 “dark frame” assist but this did not seem to improve matters much……very disappointing.

 

I have no explanation for what was going on here and need to investigate further.

Anyway I am trying Messier 51 with 5 minute subs in the hope I can improve on last years effort.

 

 

Thanks for reading

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Success – Rosette Nebula 18th March 2012

Published by ched on March 19th, 2012

After 3 months of failures I finally got to image the mighty Rosette Nebula last night.

I only managed about an hour and a quarter before it was eclipsed by my neighbors house but it was enough time to get some useable subs. They are 4 minutes long taken with a modded Canon 350D through my Williams Optics GT81 refractor. You can see a pretty bad colour gradient in the bottom left which is due to a streetlight about 30 feet away. I had the Astronomik CLS filter plugged in to try and combat some of this pollution but it was not entirely successful.

I used 5 dark frames, 11 bias and 11 flat frames ( using the DIY E.L panel I built a few months back ) and processed them using Deep Sky Stacker.

Thanks for looking

 

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Success……Mars – 29/02/2012

Published by ched on March 2nd, 2012

This was only a partial success in truth, the weather was a little misty and the wind was gusting. Mars was high above the horizon when I took this with the DFK through the 9.25″ EdgeHD. I used my televue 3X barlow at F10 so the focal length here was around 3 metres. The original stack was about 1500 frames and after running through Registax the final stack size was 493 frames.

 

 

I will have another try at Mars as soon as the weather improves and update my photo on here.

 

Thanks for looking

http://www.digitalrust.co.uk/astrophotography.html

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New Salton Sea photos

Published by ched on February 24th, 2012

I finally got around to posting the Salton Sea photos I took a couple of months back in California. They took a while to process but the skies in my opinion are just beautiful in some of these.

 

Here are a couple of them below but you can find a full set here on digital rust

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for looking

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Williams Optics GT81 field flattener

Published by ched on February 5th, 2012

Shortly after getting this scope it became apparent that the stars around the outer corner of my images were not as round as those in the centre of the image. They were by no means terrible however the effect was noticeable.

After doing some digging around on various astronomy forums it became clear that I required a Field Flattener which would provide nice tight, round stars across the entire field. As Williams Optics do not offer a matching item for my telescope I decided to go with the Teleskop Service 2″ field flattener ( referred to now on as the TSFLAT2 )  I spoke with the ever helpful Bernard at Modern Astronomy who sorted me out with the unit and several spacers that are required to achieve the correct back focus for my Canon 350D.

The TSFLAT2 is not a focal reducer so my scopes focal ratio remains at F5.9

Below is a photograph of the TSFLAT2 next to a small AA sized battery for scale

 

Below is the TSFLAT2 with the various spacers Bernard recommended for me to get the correct focus

 

 

Item 1 is the TSFLAT2, Items 2 and 3 are spacers and item 4 attaches to the dslr

 

Below is the assembly as it is currently used with my telescope

 

I will post some photos taken with the new set up as soon as the weather clears and a big thank you to Bernard for sorting the spacers :-)

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Success – Flame Nebula – 1st Feb 2012

Published by ched on February 5th, 2012

I have had some issues with collimation over the past couple of weeks after fitting “Bob’s knobs” to my scope.  I ended up with the collimation completely out of whack and spent several painfully cold evenings trying to bring it back in again. Bob’s knobs are are a great improvement on the socket head bolts that Celestron fit as standard but I must have screwed up the  replacement procedure somewhere along the line and as it is, the collimation is still not great.

Anyway, below is the picture I took of the “Flame Nebula” in Orion. Alnitak is the star in the top right of the image and is the Easternmost star in the belt of Orion

 

I took 10 x 4 minute subs, 3 x dark frames plus flat and bias frames. The moon was fairly bright and not far away from Orion so of course this did not help. There is also some regular horizontal artifact across the entire image that I cannot determine the origin of. I have read on Stargazers Lounge this type of artifact can be software induced however I have not seen it on my other images.

Below is a photo of my focus after I had locked the mirror

 

I imaged the same object a few days later with the moon at 68% of it’s brightness and tried 5 minute subs. This was a disaster and I will post an update on that shortly.

 

 

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First Light with new Williams Optics GT81

Published by ched on January 15th, 2012

I finally got chance to try out my new Williams Optics GT81 refractor yesterday ( 14.01.2011 ) after some pretty poor weather over the U.K recently.

My target was Messier object 45 – The Pleiades open star cluster, a good target as it is such a large object. I have heard a couple of reports that astrophotography results are poor without a field flattener when using a DSLR with this telescope. I have ordered a suitable flattener and will post a new picture when it arrives. Anyway, I don’t have a light pollution filter for it yet either but thought I would try some 3 minute subs as the object is almost directly overhead from my location in the U.K.

I took 12 x 3 minute subs, 4 dark frames, 10 flats and 10 bias exposures and this was the result after trying to remove as much of the streetlights and sky glow as possible.

 

The first thing that struck me about the image is the obvious horizontal streak artifact running through the very bright stars. I have done some digging around and this can be caused by a dodgy 45 degree diagonal or something in the tube. I had to use a cheap diagonal that I found lying around as the flattener and 2″ adapter have not arrived yet. I am hoping this is the cause and it is nothing more serious.

The other thing I found astonishing was the huge field of view compared with my SCT.

Below is a photo of the GT81 in a pair of ATM guide rings on the EdgeHD 9.25″ SCT. They are actually a good fit however the rear one sits mighty close to the telescope handle which appears to be fixed to the main OTA body and does not look like it is easily removed.

Well thanks for looking and I will post some more photos once I have the field flattener in place and set up correctly.

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Jodrell Bank radio telescope photos

Published by ched on January 3rd, 2012

I just uploaded a few photos of the amazing structure that is the 76 metre Lovell telescope in Cheshire (UK) to the Famous Observatories section of my website

I took these back in summer 2008 with a small Canon compact but need to return to get some nice HDR’s. According to Wiki, parts of the motor system for this telescope are built from reused parts of the gun turret mechanisms of the battleships HMS Revenge and Royal Sovereign !!

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