Comments to AllSky group on Facebook
I bought this Arducam MIPI camera for the Raspberry Pi. It is 4672*3496 and the best that anyone seems to have gotten is 1 frame every 10 seconds.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07W6LTFZC. I think it needs a $200 computer, not a $100 one. And some assembler or C programming.
But then look at the time lapses posted by this University of North Dakota Atmospheric Sciences department at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogLbgowurTg It took them a long time to realize they could take time lapses of whole days and present them at 30 fps for 144 seconds – for free – on YouTube and slowly build up thousands of subscribers. They did not post them elsewhere as an archive, but I suspect they are running daily loops now, and just posting a few of the “good” ones.
This allsky group can put together a shared YouTube site and post this kind of time lapse as “best of our work”. To attract interests, sponsors, supporters, subscribers, new members, ideas and suggestions.
I found the whole archive of these SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) images. This is a 1024*1024 image they can also show as movies. They cover the sun and study the coronal mass ejections and solar wind. But the background is the stars behind the sun, and occasional images of the ISS and high energy particles of some sort. They are not very good at advertising and finding uses for that information for algorithm development, They use it for early warning of solar wind at the earth.
https://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/c3/512/
What I am saying is that YouTube seems to accept any shaped images as long as they are stacked into video format. Use best quality, Then you just upload, share, build a community. Putting your images from these allsky cameras into obscure places on the Internet is detrimental to growth. Have the group present where people go to find videos (time series of images).
I don’t have time to work on cameras anymore. I bought these kinds of PI cameras, the HQ and lenses. And some USB cameras. But I don’t use them. If you send me a private message, I can send them to someone who will use them. A PI 4G. Did you know there is an HDMI extender for the MIPI camera cable? Have it, never tried it. I have a couple of ZWO usb cameras that should make good all sky cameras. But do not have time to make sure they get to people who would use them.
Richard Collins, Houston Texas
This Maunakea Hawaii Observatory live webcam on YouTube shows a clear sky most nights. It is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py_gzzVhFdc
The Director of the Observatory also put up a parallels stream at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-IkQHXL9ww which shows the stars, planets, and many satellites. The data from this “Star Chart” could also be mapped as an overlay app that puts a transparent div over any regular YouTube or web video and explains what is in the video. Even if your allsky camera is in the middle of the night, in the middle of a rainstorm – your video can still show what is in the sky – if you could just see it. That is NOT cheating. It is a public service to people wanting to see their local sky and know what is up there – including comets, satellites, meteors, solar events, clouds, weather and anything happening “up there” “out there”.
There are groups trying all sorts of things on the Internet, but the progress is slow. It takes organization and sharing. You can make tools so that school kids from 5 to 20 can see and come to understand the sky and weather and things seeable from earth. There are 1.92 Billion of them now.
