2022-09-17 01:19:10 <KipIngram   > I've spent some time looking at Jupiter.  It's one of the more impressive planets to check out.  I've got a 14" Dobsonian scope, and it shows it off quite nicely.
2022-09-17 01:19:50 <KipIngram   > Hey, night before last the ISS flew over my area just after sunset - that was a pretty neat show too.  Very bright.
2022-09-17 01:20:25 <KipIngram   > I was hoping it would cross into earth's shadow while I could see it, and just "wink out," but it didn't made it all the way across the sky until it hid behind some clouds on the horizon.
2022-09-17 03:25:48 <veltas      > It's quite cool how some of its moons are so visible
2022-09-17 03:26:13 <veltas      > This is quite interesting, although I skipped to the end: https://piotrduperas.com/posts/nan-boxing
2022-09-17 03:26:32 <veltas      > Seems relevant to Forth programming or at least to BASIC
2022-09-17 03:32:13 <veltas      > KipIngram: I'm going to try looking at it again tonight, it appears literally right through my window so was viewing indoors
2022-09-17 10:45:19 <MrMobius    > hmm, the tagged pointers seem pretty dependent on the architecture
2022-09-17 10:45:54 <MrMobius    > assuming 64 bit shifts are cheap for example
2022-09-17 12:58:21 <KipIngram   > veltas: that makes it nice.  This scope of mine, as it came out of the box, was awfully hard to move outside and set up.  I put casters on the base, though, so that I can roll it around all set up.
2022-09-17 12:59:05 <KipIngram   > Being a Dobsonian, it can't do true equatorial tracking, but both axes are motorized and once you align it outside it will drive both motors to keep something in the field of view.
2022-09-17 12:59:32 <KipIngram   > That's good only for straight viewing, though - the field of view "rotates" in the eyepiece, so no long photo exposures for me.
2022-09-17 12:59:49 <KipIngram   > My skies here close to Houston are really too bright for that anyway, though.
2022-09-17 13:01:23 <KipIngram   > I do have an idea for a project, though, that uses a linear CCD sensor and just lets Earth's rotation move the image across the CCD.  So it would continuously image single pixel lines of the target, and then I'd stitch those together in software.
2022-09-17 13:01:40 <KipIngram   > The image would be equivalent to a REAlly bit 2D CCD.
2022-09-17 13:01:45 <KipIngram   > big
2022-09-17 13:02:18 <KipIngram   > So this little $20 CCD would wind up giving me images corresponding to a much more expensive "one shot" sensor.
2022-09-17 13:02:46 <KipIngram   > And it completely removes the need for motor drive.
2022-09-17 13:03:05 <KipIngram   > I'm actually a little surprised there are commercial versions of that already out there.
2022-09-17 13:03:23 <KipIngram   > So one more thing for my list of things I'll probably never get done.  :-)
2022-09-17 13:11:36 <KipIngram   > But I felt nifty when I thought of it.