Cloud Study

Another project that I'm doing to try to resurrect is my cloud observation project.  The first thing to do was to see if I still had the notes I'd taken over a year ago about configuring the all-sky cameras (that are being used for meteor detection and other astronomical stuff at night) to view the sky during the day and in color.

Luckily, it's all still there.  In fact there were python scripts to set the camera parameters.  I then added a little thing to be able to save the images to disk (which is ok for now).

Anyhow, here's the view from USL00Y -- which is looking towards the northeast.  The image is upside-down since the camera is rotated 180 degrees in it's mount (I don't care what the orientation is):

So now I'll sit back and think about what to do with this.

Here's another image, same camera, taken a few hours after the previous image was taken:

gotta work on colors a little -- this image looks way too red.  As I recall, there's a setting for this.

Out of focus raindrops from USL00Y in 'light' mode:

Monsoon Season 2023

The monsoons are slow to get started this year, but we've already had a couple of fairly decent storms.

My all-sky camera system (USL00X) captured some lightening the other evening:

The all-sky camera system has been having some trouble lately, mainly (I think) due to the heat.  The cameras are pretty indestructable from what I can tell, but the network switch has a max operating temp of 104F and a max storage temp of 158F.  On top of that, the fan controller does not come on (i.e., it will turn off!!) if the temp is above 50C (122F).  So it's probably getting pretty hot in there.

I recently replaced the network switch and that at least allows me to see the cameras.  The system is still running a little flaky, but I'm on it and will get it back to normal operations soon.