blinkie testing

So, I've been testing my blinkie prototype for Duckon 2011. I'm switching to coin cell batteries (CR2032) because honestly these days they're cheaper than four LR44s, and they have the same power capacity, is more compact and you can easily buy holders for them that are easily soldered on.

I chose a really low power microcontroller and put some nod in the firmware to power savings, and wanted to let the prototype run until it killed a battery.

This could take a while. So far it's been running for 32 hours, and though it's not as bright as when the battery was fresh, it's still going fine. It ran very bright for probably a good 18 hours.

Edit: 60 hours and it's still running, though dimming noticeably. For some reason the green is dimmer than the red.

Astronomy restart - maybe later

Now that I've cleared the astronomy plate - nearly every last bit of astronomy stuff sold, I'm starting to examine the reasons why, despite really enjoying astronomy, for the last 5 years or so I hardly ever actually did anything.

I think I will restart, this time I think with a computer driven 8" scope and a standardized, parfocal set of workhorse eyepieces. Modern 8" scopes on a computer alt-az mount are relatively inexpensive and very light and portable, and 8" is a pretty good size; big enough to get into a heck of a lot of deep sky objects besides the planets, small enough to easily carry in any car.

I was thinking about a 5", but after looking at video of setup on the new 8" scopes, particularly the Celestron 8se, I'm pretty convinced that they're even more portable and easy to use than before, and having been all over the spectrum now, I think that the 8" Celestron Schmidt that I had 10 years ago was probably the easiest to use and purely fun scope that I ever had. It wasn't computer guided at all, but it was fun. I think the computer will only add to it.

I'm going to wait until spring when I should be able to have money in hand to pay for it, and warm(ish) weather to use it in. That'll give me some time to think it over a few dozen times too.

In any case, it's about 1/3 the money I had tied up into it before, and a scope that's not only smaller, it's far faster to set up, and can be easily broken down and tucked into a corner.

I think selling everything and going back to zero was the move I had to make at this point, because it was hard for me to think in different directions when I already had about the "best" scope that I could imagine having in the direction I went in, and a modest, computerized Schmidt Cassegrain scope is, well, not 180* away, but more than 90.