Announcements

Watch this spot

Posted by jrcrilly on October 30, 2015
Posted in: Announcements, Homebrewing. Leave a Comment

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It’s time to begin the final stage of renovations to my home brewery. I’ll be switching to a one tier brewstand with all temperature-controlled burners and a stainless steel mash tun instead of the modified beverage cooler. I’ll be using the same stainless steel boil kettle and HLT/HERMS that I’ve been using. It won’t make better beer, and it won’t make beer faster, but the intent is to make the process more enjoyable and, perhaps, more consistent..  The plan is to do the first brew mid- or late November.

First brew with new HERMS heat exchanger

Posted by jrcrilly on October 3, 2015
Posted in: Announcements, Homebrewing. Leave a Comment

newherms

 

Brewed my standard American pale ale today (a tamer version of Sierra Nevada pale ale). I always keep some of this around but I was a little careless and ran out this week. Now I won’t have any available for a few weeks. I wanted to make a larger batch but since I was testing the new heat exchanger I decided it would be more prudent to keep it down to a 5 gallon batch in case there were any complications.  The new heat exchanger worked great – the 1/2″ tubing permitted much better flow and the system responds much more quickly.

I’ve been using only welded keg fittings until now but I installed these weldless fittings myself and they are perfectly sealed. I won’t hesitate to drill any needed future holes in the kegs. I’ll need at least two in the near future; one in the boil kettle for a whirlpool inlet and one in the hot liquor tank for a thermowell. Please ignore the soot on the keggle; I had tried to soup up the HLT burner and got the orifice too large. After a couple of brews the keg looked like this so I went back down to a smaller orifice. It provides more heat amd no more soot. I just haven’t cleaned the old soot off yet.

 

I ordered the ingredients for my next brew today. It will be a clone of Ballast Point’s grapefruit sculpin. I’m not an IPA fan generally, but that one is wonderful.

Another placeholder, I guess…

Posted by jrcrilly on April 23, 2015
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Just a few notes to show that I’m still here and still interested…

Still no images since September, but everything is set up for an imaging session the next clear weekend.

I have switched from the QSI683WSG-8 to an astro-modified Canon 450D DSLR. It’s been more than ten years since I shot with a DSLR so I don’t quite know what to expect. I know I’m losing the low noise of a cooled camera, and the sensitivity  of unfiltered luminance frames. This camera gets rid of the amp glow that plagued my original (300D) camera so that will help.

Made the trip to NEAF in Suffern, NY last weekend and had the usual great time. I enjoyed speaking to the usual folks and seeing the usual astro goodies. As in recent years, I failed to take photographs so I won’t be reporting on the show beyond that.

I have found something new to do on the cloudy and/or windy nights. I’m just getting set up for making homebrew beer. Got a couple of kegerators (keg refrigerators), along with some 5 gallon kegs. Also a boiling pot, fermentation buckets, and all the fiddly bits needed to make stuff to  go into the kegs. I even made the trip to the next county (the nearest homebrew store) and picked up fresh ingredients for my first 5 gallon batch.

Happy New Year!

Posted by jrcrilly on December 31, 2014
Posted in: Announcements. 4 comments

Nothing really new here; no new images since September (and thus no new posts since September). It’s clear tonight but lots of Moon, pretty cold, and I don’t feel well so it’ll be another missed night. That said, I hate to permit the blog to stagnate for so long and decided to post something just to keep it alive. Going forward, I’ll try to come up with something worthwhile to post at least monthly. When the images are flowing, of course, it will be much more active than that. I am not claiming that this is the first such worthwhile post. It’s just an attempt to get things started.

It’s been a blast so far. From the anticipation of waiting for the new gear to arrive to the fun of setting it all up and grabbing the first images to the ongoing enjoyment of fairly steady use ever since, this project has provided plenty of fun for me. With any luck at all, it has also provided information to others.

 

Watch this space!

Cloudy Nights 3.0 is coming!

Posted by jrcrilly on July 30, 2014
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I refer to the terrific www.cloudynights.com website, the premier astronomy website with articles, reviews, classified ads, and a huge discussion board (about 77,000 members last time I checked!). Many folks will remember when we rolled out CN 2.0 to update the aging and difficult-to-maintain original software (in use on CN for over ten years). Thinking that folks wanted a new, modern look we didn’t make much effort to maintain the fit and feel of the original setup. There was a very substantial backlash and loads of complaints so it was rolled back to the original system while a more suitable replacement package was found, obtained, and configured. That’s been going on in the background ever since. Testers report a much more comfortable transition, with much of the original fit and feel maintained while still adding useful functionality.

It’s going to take time to transfer the huge databases (ten years worth of content) into the new structure – and, of course, any traffic added during the transition would just confuse things.

 

Here’s the plan. Some  inactive content is being converted right now while the old system continues to operate. The old system will go dark this weekend while the bulk of the conversion takes place.  Barring unforeseen complications, the new site should be up by Monday morning. Same URL, same usernames, same passwords. Just use your old account.

(Really) brief NEAF report

Posted by jrcrilly on April 14, 2014
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Got back late last night from the North East Astronomy Forum in Suffern, NY. As always, I had a great time interacting with the astronomy enthusiasts and checking out new and upcoming products. You’ll have to look elsewhere for photos, but here are a few of what I considered highlights:

Hercules imaging Newtonians in 20″, 16″, and 12″ at F/8. Cellular primaries, CF truss tubes. The 20″ weighs only 100 pounds! From Quebec.

http://www.telescopeshercules.com/

Rainbow astronomy had an inexpensive 12″ (I think; didn’t take notes) CDK and a sweet 80 pound capacity EQ mount (1500X slew speed!) to go with it. When I checked, only the GEM was on their site:

Home

Skywatcher had the EQ8Pro (I guess these have been around in the other hemisphere, but it’s the first one I’ve seen) and the  AZ-EQ6 GT (same situation).

ca.skywatcher.com

Ioptron had the CEM60, which looked especially attractive to me.

Two of my favorite exhibitors weren’t there – Astronomics and Officina Stellare (so no RiDK or RH models over which to drool).

Cloudy Nights rollback

Posted by jrcrilly on March 20, 2014
Posted in: Announcements. 2 comments

Folks visiting the Cloudy Nights website ( www.cloudynights.com ) will observe that the new system launched March 7 has been taken down. Unanticipated costs as well as unanticipated user resistance have forced a change of direction. The traffic from the new site is currently being rolled into the old database and the original CN will be back online in a day or two but will include the activities that took place on the new site. A change is still required and everything will be ported over into yet another revision in the next few weeks. This version should feel much more like the original website so less user resistance is expected.