Triple-Spec

I've started making some low-poly models of some more of the instrumentation. They're not very exciting, but lend a little variation in color and shape...

Here's a view showing the Hale version of the Triple-Spectrometer mounted at the Cassegrain focus as well as on its stand in a storage room. Of course, it wouldn't actually be in both places at the same time. I just haven't written the exclusionary code yet.

For more information about the Triple-Spec, see http://www.astro.virginia.edu/research/instrumentation/triplespec.php

Minor updates

I've only been making minor updates recently to the Hale Telescope addon, being distracted by other stuff. Pictures soon.

Fireworks!

In honor of the day, I've created some animated fireworks for use with Celestia. They're based on highly modified versions of the ScriptedOrbit routines used by the Hale Telescope Addon.


fireworks_v1.zip (236KB)



This shows them going off over crude models of the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial.

Flying Carpet available

The flying carpet addon is now avaiable.
I didn't bother to try to keep the carpet level,
so it just moves in straight lines.

I did make the buttons bigger, though.


http://www.lepp.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/files/flying_carpet_v1.zip (150KB)

Here it is at the entrance to the Hampton Court Maze, which is included in the Addon.

Flying Carpet

It's clear to me that the Hale Telescope Addon won't be ready for some months more since there are so many details that aren't right yet :(

So I've diverted some effort into a project that uses some of the Telescope's Lua control functions. I hope it'll be ready this coming weekend, even though it's only 90% finished ;)

It's a flying carpet.



Here it is hovering over the southern section of the Hale Observatory's property.

I could probably make it available as-is, but there are a few things I'd like to improve.

1. Reorient carpet and its motion relative to local down. This is relatively difficult. Currently the carpet stays oriented with respect to its initial position.

2. Provide some other local surface to navigate -- maybe a maze?

3. Reorient up/down buttons to point up/down

4. Use a picture of a Persian Carpet.

out of order

elevator no work

odd and ends

I added several "easy" things today:

• rotate dome manually
  
• raise and lower windscreen manually(but not really: it either tracks automatically or is down. I haven't figured out a way to track the telescope in azimuth easily.)
  
• raise and lower central lift (seen below)
  

I've been frustrating about the two conventional elevators: one is for freight and one is for people. Implementing the buttons and controls for the elevator algorithm would be a pain. Maybe I'll just chicken out and hang "out of order" signs on them.