This week, I have been mostly working on… — Laser Harps, Tesla Coils, and Killer Space Robots

The Transit of Venus

June 5, 2012

OK so it looks a lot like a black dot on the face of the sun, but you don’t see it very often… Taken with a Nikon D2X, 300mm zoom lens and a solar filter.

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…conclusive proof of giant space bears on the moon!

March 28, 2012

Shot some footage with a Microsoft Lifecam modified for prime focus on the 16″ Meade Lightbridge – with a 2x Barlow lens. The moon is made of blancmange (apparently)… All the wibbly-wobbly stuff is due to the atmospheric conditions at the time. At 0:09 you can definitely see the paw print of a giant space […]

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Anyone know what these things are…?

March 20, 2012

We helped out set up a science room for a local school. Most of the things we found had an obvious function, but we were unable to figure out a couple things. Anyone got any idea what these do? (…nothing to do with Harry Potter…) (The patent search didn’t really turn anything up…)

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…my best Orion Nebula yet.

March 11, 2012

Up til today I thought this was my best Orion Nebula image: Until I got the hang of image stacking, now *this* is the best: A stack of 12 images and 6 dark frames, combined with DeepStackStacker. This is as good as the single image I took at the dark sky site – so it’ll […]

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…Orbital Spex for under a tenner (dollars that is…)

March 10, 2012

Sure, you can buy those centrally-located LED miner’s lamps, but nothing says 90’s geek chic like your very own Orbital glasses. Now you can recreate those halcyon (harr harr) days of almost pitch black gig-ness (“When do Orbital come on?” – “They’ve been playing for the last 10 minutes”) I needed a pair of these […]

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…fixing up the optics in a Meade SN-8 reflector telescope.

February 29, 2012

I got to take the telescope out to a “dark field” site over the weekend – the difference in viewing was amazing. Really clear, and hundreds more stars visible to the naked eye. Managed to get some colo[u]r out of M42 – although it soon became obvious that I had a problem with the focal […]

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Jupiter and Andromeda (again)

February 13, 2012

It was murderously cold outside last night. But I stayed out long enough to attempt a photograph of Jupiter. This time I had bought a Microsoft Lifecam 1080p webcam, and removed the focusing assembly so that it was just a bare sensor. This was attached to a 2X Barlow lens and installed in my 8″ […]

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…observing the Orion Nebula

January 31, 2012

Last night was a pretty cool night for astronomy (both figuratively and literally) – there was a great deal of stuff visible, and since I traded my old iPhone for one of the new Droids I was able to take advantage of Google Sky* and some of the other location apps to find interesting stuff […]

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Hey, it’s been awfully quiet around here…

December 16, 2011

Yes it has, during the run up to Christmas things get a bit crazy in the Hobley household. That’s not to say I’ve not been very busy on the CNC router, but mainly producing presents and other festive stuff. I have been working on a tip-top secret project featuring the Ebow-clone I put together in […]

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…infringing patents (probably)

November 23, 2011

I’ve been meaning to build one of these for ages. Can anyone guess what it is? It’s not a Taser, or one of those shocking buzzer things – the clue is that the coils are well “potted” and have very different gauges of wire. Answers on a postcard please, or in the comments… UPDATE : […]

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