Howards Astronomical Adventures
: Tales From The Night Sky
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New Meteor Camera Online
A few days ago, Tuesday the 12th, my new Global Meteor Network (GMN) camera was officially online. I had requested and been assigned station ID US004L. It points to the SE and seems to capture more meteors than US002J so far. The picture below was captured its first night and is a rather bright meteor!…
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Two Years of Lithium Power
Two years ago I took the picture above showing I had gotten the parts together for my super battery (as I call it). The four blue cells are temporarily clamped together for a test charge / discharge cycle. Total capacity was right about 270Ah (at 10 amps per hour rate), a serious amount of power.…
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GMN Camera Rebuild
The standard build for a GMN camera uses a POE cable integrating a small buck converter molded into the cable at the RJ45 jack. This drops the power over Ethernet (POE) voltage from about 48vdc down to 12vdc. I have found these integrated POE cables are unreliable; I have now experienced two failures. The latest…
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Its The Weather – Again
January was quite the roller coaster ride around my area as we dropped down below zero for days. Then we climbed up to record highs to end the month. This is a case where average daily temperatures are really misleading. Officially, at Lawrence Airport, the daily average was 25.4 degrees F for the month. This…
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Its The Weather
Today my area dipped to -11° F in the early morning after a high yesterday around 4°F. Four days in a row with lows below zero F. Looking back at local climate data from the NWS for the greater KC area this is one the coldest series of days here in over ten years. Looking…
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Snow Day!
Oh boy did I get a good snow event the past 24 hours. What started as rain / slushy snow turned into over 8 inches of accumulation. My CoCoRAHS gauge Tuesday morning: How the heck does one deal with this situation? There is a simple and short training video that covers this: As to actually…
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Meteor Camera Back Online
After a week of clouds and rain Thursday night should be clear so I remounted my GMN camera. The meteor camera had been offline since the start of the month as it has a power converter failure. The failure required me to take it apart and replace the cable. Along the way I learned more…