The Genesis Of
This project has been brewing in my mind for many months before it finally saw the light. The amazing adventure had with the catchtheiridium project has confirmed to me that, with the right dose of enthusiasm and passion, even the ideas that appear initially complex and difficult can materialize in positive experiences especially when they play the right chords of shared passions with other people. What is it about? Well, in 2020 I felt in love with the idea of being able to build an “all-sky camera” for 360 ° night sky monitoring (hence the name “all sky”). And here comes the name: The All-Sky Camera Project.
An all-sky camera is nothing more than an astronomical camera which, properly programmed, spends its nights taking pictures of the sky hoping to being able to capture meteors or satellites flares and so on and which each morning makes available on a series of videos and characteristic photos of the night just passed (e.g. startrail and video of the rotation of the constellations around the polar. Have a look herebelow!). A large number of professional solutions (which unfortunately require a huge amount of money) are already available on the market and they are often used by public and private observatories.
An example of video made by and all-sky camera (Credits: ChrisLX200)
Fortunately and thanks to the generosity of part of the world community of amateur astronomers, it is possible to find on the net some technical solutions and “do it yourself” projects that allow, by investing time and energies, to realize at a lower of costs, a fully customizable all-sky camera. After spending few months investigating which type of product was most suitable for my case, I figured I was ready to build, program and install an all-sky camera here in the roof of my house of Serramanna and make freely accessible the contents that would be created with it.
The economic investment necessary for the purchase of all the materials of this project has been estimated at around 500,00 €. In a first moment I hoped to recover it by selling some lens and tools already in my possession to be sacrificed for the cause but some friends of mine to whom I talked about the project told me that they would be happy to contribute in some way. That willing was the key that help me to understand that maybe the project could be be shared with other people.
During August 2020 I therefore launched a crowdfunding campaign positivelly closed after only three days with 650,00 € collected which summed to the 170,00 € personally recovered reached the unespected amount of 820,00 €.
The extra budget therefore made it possible to purchase higher-performance hardware than initially planned.
Example of All-Sky Camera
All-sky Camera by Thomas Jacquin (www.thomasjacquin.com)
Single Frame
All-sky Camera by Raffaello Di Martino (www.kwos.org/weather/allsky)
Startrail Frames
All-sky Camera by Raffaello Di Martino (www.kwos.org/weather/allsky)
