Telescope
CoSaTrak		The following topics are covered here: Geocaching Orion Observasie Groep (OOG)  Testing green lasers for astronomy Amateur Astronomy Astronomical History Telescope Making Satellite Tracking Amateur Photography Snappy tests and software Vesta Webcam modification 1004x Surveillance Camera modification Aerial Photographs Crazy road sign pages Software Koorts reunie - Sept. 2000 Electronics CCD's Vacuum & Cryogenics Search Engines Site Map
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Background  I grew up in the tiny little town of Touws River where this aerial photograph (24k jpg) was taken at about the time when I was born, showing my birthplace. My family and I are presently staying in Wellington (95k jpg) in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. In this 400mm telephoto shot (65k jpg) which I took from the top of the du Tiotskloof pass, you can just see my house. My home language is Afrikaans, the world's youngest Germanic language which, together with Hebrew and Indonesian, are regarded as the world's three "wonder languages" to have originated in less than 50 years. By strange coincidence my birth-town and present hometown together with my wife's college and residence as well as our present employers and my hobby, are all connected as far back as 1882 with people as far away as England and America and "bodies" as distant as Venus and the Sun. Click here for the full story - of hier vir die Afrikaanse weergawe.

Work  I am employed as an Electronic Technician at the South African Astronomical Observatory's Cape Town head office. At times I need to visit our observing outstation near Sutherland where I took the above picture which is now used as the cover of our Observatory Brochure. We normally drive there via the historic town of Matjiesfontein (77k jpg).  Play  As you can see from my favourite links, my main interests are astronomy, telescope making, satellite tracking and photography which includes video. To assist me in some of these, I have written a few simple computer programs over the years which you are welcome to download and try out. My main sport interests are rugby and cricket as a spectator and I do a little cycling for fun.

Hardware  Illustrated page showing a Vesta webcam being modified for astronomical use.     Similar modifications and tests were done to 1004x Surveillance Camera.     Here are fully illustrated pages of the re-building of my 9" Newtonian Telescope from an old fashioned Texereau to a more modern truss split-ring equatorial.     A similar page, showing the tripod mounted spotting scope, fitted with setting circles, I use as a Satellite Tracking Telescope     This mount was later motorized and put under software control for CoSaTrak (Computerised Satellite Tracking)     VIDEOTRAK Greg Roberts' implemented CoSaTrak motorizing an old ex-MOONWATCH telescope mount using a CCD video camera

Software  CoSaTrak (304k) - Computerised Satellite Tracking - control a telescope for Tracking Satellites. SeeCoSat (241k) - Software (by Greg Roberts) to prepare satellite prediction files for CoSaTrak astro.zip (46k)    - General positional astronomy program with real-time Alt/Az output. Info pip.zip (23k)       - Turn your PC into a 1000-lap-memory logged stopwatch & set its RTC by radio. Info cell.zip (29k)       - By David Chandler for doing 9, 18 & 27 point flotation mirror cell calculations. extract.zip (20k) - Program for selectively extracting satellite elements from big element files. Info gematria.zip (55k) - I once wrote this Gematria (theomatics) calculation program for a friend. Info Snappy Collection - A near complete collection of Snappy installation software and patches

Animated Graphics  In experimenting with GIF animation, I created this sequence from pictures I took with a Smoke-stack Implosion (192k gif) of an old power station near Cape Town. For this sequence showing my Telescope Rebuild (158k gif), I turned the output of a morphing program into an Animated GIF - (Full Story) A fun animation showing the stages of assembly of my VisuTrak satellite tracking telescope mount See footage of a "collision" between the brightest satellite and the brightest star .. (full story). A few example animated GIF's from footage taken with Greg Roberts' VIDEOTRAK - video satellite tracking system, an implementation of CoSaTrak

Astronomical History  Read here about the 1882 Transit of Venus observations - (of hier in Afrikaans) that were done from Wellington and my current search to try and find the observing site and the antique telescope also used to observe this rare event, next to happen again in 2004.

Taking the C out of CCD!  CCD/Cryogenic workers might find this detective story interesting on how we identified and cured our CCD contamination problems. (You might prefer to read the long version for more specific detail.)

Photography & Gallery  I also try my hand at photography from time to time and these pictures mostly tell a story, either individually or as a group. After seeing this funny roadsign in my gallery page, people sent me lots more crazy road sign pictures. Gedurende Sept. 2000 het ons klomp Koortse reunie gehou! Kom kyk gerus na ons Rietvlei-foto-album This is my procedure for determining focus and exposure time for astrophotography. Here are some Resolution Tests done on a Snappy Video Capturing Device. I have collected quite a lot of Snappy Software and Patches. One of the first implementations of my Snappy was to capture a "collision" between Mir and Sirius.

Links  Work Related Hobby Related Others CCD's Astronomy Sport Vacuum Telescope Making Search Engines Electronics Satellite Tracking Miscellaneous

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