Welcome to my website!
I use this site to document and share my many interests, mostly Astrophotography and Information Technology. Please feel free to contact me with any questions, I try to share whatever I've learned with anyone that's interested.
Yeah, DON'T DO IT.
I'll clarify, if you want to use dot1x auth, and you plan on stacking your powerconnect 62xx switches and using them for L3 routing, don't bother. There's some kind of bug in the code that causes random ports to lose connectivity to the router ip (ip address of the powerconnect itself). Dell started working with me to replicate the issue in their lab but whoever they had working on it wanted to point the blame on our RADIUS server. Which makes no sense, because as soon as I unstacked all the switches and ran each one stand-alone, dot1x works flawlessly with the exact same RADIUS server.
Guess not enough people use dot1x on wired ethernet for Dell to care.
Interesting article on protecting your data, check it out.
https://www.eff.org/sites/default/files/filenode/EFF-border-search_0.pdf
For a $5,000 scope, it's really too bad all the mechanical parts need to be replaced. $600 in custom adapters later and I shouldn't have anymore sagging camera issues.
A clear sky with no moon! I was able to use my pier for the first time, I got it leveled with some stainless steel shims, then filled the steel pipe with about 80lbs of sand and attached the CGE mount. The mount will stay permanently attached, which should save me a ton of time since polar alignment won't have to be done each time I setup anymore.
Security box with computer, wifi router and power distribution/control
And thanks to the rigrunner device I now have some idea what kind of power my equipment draws, between 8 and 9 amps. The camera is not surprisingly the biggest draw, considering it has to cool the massive 16803 CCD to -50c below ambient. I had no trouble keeping the chip at -45c all night.
All hooked up, the pier is very stable compared to the tripod. However, it's almost too tall, I may have to build a short deck around it and maybe make it just the right dimensions for a dome? hmmm...
The custom telegizmos cover I ordered for the pier fits perfectly!
Here's the first image, try counting all the galaxies.
M42 obviously, just playing around still, trying to get everything figured out and a new work flow established.
