Let me tell you a bit about one of the best weeks of my life. It started as a post to a newsgroup I occasionally monitor (rete). There was going to be an intensive class in the design and construction of astrolabes held in April, in Istanbul. I hadn’t even considered going, but when my […]
Work on the Astrolabe Generator is still in progress. Version 4 is coming along. Covid, job changes, life changes and laziness, combined with my tendency to hyper-focus on projects in rotation has meant that updates to this blog, and pushing out Version 4 will come slowly. I do respond to bug reports, and I am […]
A friend in Australia noticed that there was a problem with rendering the twilight lines when working in the southern hemisphere. I missed a couple of lines of code when I added support for southern latitudes. The problem is now fixed, and the download for the Astrolabe Generator is updated to the patched version.
Yesterday I added another project to my Thingiverse projects: The Advanced Astrolabe. This project shares the same design plan as the Basic astrolabe I posted earlier, but I added more advanced features to this one. Those of you who want something more substantial than paper to work with should check this out.
There are at least two articles about making and using astrolabes in the print media this month. The first, in the June issue of BBC Sky at Night Magazine is a quick how-to piece on constructing an instrument using my Astrolabe Generator. The second article is in May/June issue of AramocoWorld and is more in-depth […]
So, I’ve been busy. There will be several posts over the next few days, catching things up. Most importantly to me personally: I now have access to the tools and space to start working in something other than paper. I’ll be posting about the Nova-labs Maker-space at length later. Next, related to that, I now […]
One of my readers was kind enough to put together an Instructable on turning the output of my generator into a fully usable plastic instrument. How to Build a Customized Astrolabe Using a Laser Cutter: http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Build-a-Customized-Astrolabe-Using-a-Laser-/
I received a nice email from a user in Argentina, and he has given permission to post some of his photos and notes on how he achieved the lovely result. “I started generating the EPS files with your software for my southern latitude, and then added some more stars to the rete and a clever-but-mostly-useless […]
As you can see, I’m still working at adding functionality. This release includes: Fixed bug in Arcs of the Signs. Both options now work. Expanded options for the sine/cosine grid scale on the astrolabe back: Grid divided by 60 or 100 Optional cosine lines Arcs and radials Lines for each degree option Under the hood: […]