John Furman Astrophotography

09/14/2021

Someone caught a meteor impact on Jupiter yesterday. Credits are in the picture.

03/07/2021

A lot of people ask me how I get my cables organized so well. One of the biggest things is ANGLED CABLES at the correct length. Doing 90 degree cable ends makes a major difference and I HIGHLY recommend it.

02/19/2021

The Surface of Venus

This is one of the coolest planetary pictures we have of our solar system. This is the surface of Venus on 3/1/1982 taken by the lander of the Russian Venera 13 probe. The lander was expected to late approximately 30 minutes, but it survived for a little over 2 hours. What makes that amazing is the conditions of which it was operating in. The surface of Venus is a scorching 855 degrees F and has a crushing atmospheric pressure about 90 time more than Earth. A few days later the Venera 14 probes lander touched down about 600 miles away and it survived for about an hour in the hellish conditions.

02/17/2021

Some of you may have been following my power supply, mini pc, and cable management project. Well it's finally done! I have my custom made power supply attached to the front bottom of my dovetail with my mini pc hanging from the bottom of that. I made custom wiring harnesses for everything with right angle connectors so my wiring is all super organized and good looking. I control the mini pc through Windows Remote Desktop. So far, everything is working out great! I'm really happy with how it all turned out!

Equipment details:
Telescope: Meade 8in SCT
Mount: Celestron CGX
Power supply: I custom made it
Mini PC: Zotac ZBOX PI335 Pico (runs Windows 10 Pro)
Focuser: Williams DDG w/ Sesto Senso auto focus
OAG: ZWO m68 OAG
Filter Drawer: ZWO m54
Guide Camera: ASI120MM Mini
Imaging Camera: ASI6200MC Pro

02/14/2021

02/12/2021

I got my custom made power supply and my mini PC mounted to the telescope last night! They fit perfectly! I'm still working on designing a PCB for the power supply as an upgrade to the current bus bar I'm using inside of it. I'll have my custom length right angle power cables done over the next few days and I'm working on sourcing right angle USB components to make my custom USB cables. Project it turning out awesome so far!

02/10/2021

I finally started my power supply project. I don't have all the components yet, but I wanted to at least make a little progress. My power supply is going to hand off the dovetail at the front of my OTA and my mini PC that controls everything will attach to the bottom of it. I'm making all custom length power cables with right angle connectors. This is going to help cable management SO MUCH. I will only have a single power wire coming down from my OTA and the USB to the mount. Everything else will all be contained on the OTA. Project is turning out pretty awesome so far! I may be open to making and selling a few more power supplies so if anyone is interested please let me know.

02/06/2021

Here's a follow-up to my recent mini PC post. I've temporarily "mounted" it to my telescope for a test fit. I think I'm going to turn it 90 degrees and use right angle cables, but this kind of illustrates where I'm heading with the idea. Cable management is so much better!

01/31/2021

CGX surgery is done! In total 4 holes had to be drilled out and have steel thread inserts installed because the aluminum threads were damaged. The slop in the RA axis is gone! I'm going unconventional with the grease though. This stuff should work well!

01/28/2021

1. Rosette Nebula with stars
2. Rosette Nebula without stars
3. Krispy Kreme donut
Coincidence? I think not.
Photo credit Greg LaMonica

01/27/2021

My mini pc came in and holy cow! This thing is TINY! I was expecting it to be sluggish but I'm really surprised. It runs Windows 10 Pro smoothly and doesn't lag at all! PHD2, APT, and SGP all run great on it. I chose this because Windows is more flexible and I'm not tied to proprietary software like I would be with the ZWO unit. I'm permanently mounting this to my telescopes dovetail so I no longer have to worry about plugging everything in when I use the scope. I'm controlling it via the native Windows Remote Desktop tool. It's so helpful with cable management too! Now I only have a single power wire coming off my mount. My initial impressions, I would highly recommend these!

You can find more info about it here https://amzn.to/3qX430P

01/26/2021

Still working on repairing the CGX. The stripped screw hole is fixed. Just have to wait for grease to deliver so everything can be regreased and put back together. Fingers crossed that this improves the RA guiding!