Astro Seoul

Last Saturday I took a trip down to Anseong to check out some astronomy sites. I envisaged a one and half hour trip but traffic jams soon dispelled that delusion. It was more like two and half hours.

Anseong or Ansung Observatory. The dome houses a 16 inch Meade.

You definitely need a car to get to this place. It’s about 7 kms outside of Anseong and is located on a small hill. Here it is on Google Maps During the day it is closed. We were allowed to walk around a little but only after my wife was given the OK by the caretakers.

A maddening din from a dog farm not far away could be heard and I wondered how those caretakers could live there. It also spoiled the atmosphere for me to hear the yelps of those poor dogs confined to tiny cages and a wretched life.

The caretaker told us to come back when the show starts around 6.30 that night, adding that the cost would be 25,000 won per person! That was a bit steep for me because I would not understand a word of the presentation.

While thinking about whether to return, we decided to tour the countryside and check out any viable viewing locations. A tourist book we had showed there was another observatory about 33 kms away. It appeared to be in a 5 story building, so that sounded promising. We headed off to see it.

The so-called Sondo Observatory in a secluded valley with a few houses and farms.

So much for 5 stories, though it’s technically correct. This was built in 1994 but it was past its hay-day, and from what my wife could glean from an old guy walking by, it’s very rarely used. What a waste. Here it is on Google Maps.

I got the impression that it was a tourist venture that didn’t work out. A small fishing lake was further down the valley too, which appeared to have been abandoned. The area is too hard to get to and too much out of the way for any business ventures to work of this kind. Still, it was interesting to see.

We headed back to Anseong and after dinner there revisited Anseong. The place was swarming with kids. We were already late, and then we were told that it was fully booked. However, we were given the option to wait around to get a quick tour later, when the kids were in the lecture room.

As darkness descended, I was disappointed in the sky or naked eye views in general. Although there are more stars than Seoul, there still wasn’t that many on view. On the horizon a light haze was thrown up by Anseong. So, with the naked eye, not much to see. From memory Yang Pyong, directly east of Seoul up in the mountains, was a lot better.

Up on the roof of Anseong Observatory. A telescope shed with a further 3 telescopes is bottom left.

Nonetheless, with a telescope there is plenty to see. After a friendly assistant befriended us, who spoke some English, we got to take a look in the dome and through the various telescopes they had set up. The thrill for me was seeing M13 for the first time thought the 16 inch Meade. I had also never been in an astronomy dome before–now I have, I want one!

Here are a list of Korean observatories in no particular order. Most are public venues that often cater to kids groups.

SongAm Starsvalley

Gwacheon National Science Museum

Astrocafe Joongme Mountain

Star Metro Daejeon

Ourstar

Korea Astronomy Science Inst.

AnSung Observatory

Gimhae Astronomical Obs.

Gunpo Nuri Obs.

Center of Korea Observ

Star GS Observatory

Nature and Star Observatory

(Source for this was a couple of other sites that I neglected to record.)

Linking my telescope with Meade’s #505 cable and a serial adapter using /dev/ttyS0 just didn’t work, no matter what I tried. So, I couldn’t use Linux astronomy programs to control my LX90.

Here is what I did to solve the problem after getting a USB-Serial Adapter.

To set this up, plug in the USB-Serial adapter to my one remaining USB port. Then after a few seconds I ran “dmesg.” This was the output in relation to the adapter

usb 1-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 5
usb 1-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice

You can do something like this to narrow down the results:

dmesg | grep usb

The thing was detected so now here’s the trick to get its details, although this little procedure probably isn’t necessary for most people. First unplug the adapter and type “lsusb.” This is what I got:

Bus 004 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0a81:0203 Chesen Electronics Corp. Mouse
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 413c:8000 Dell Computer Corp.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

Now plug in the adapter again and run “lsusb” again. This is what I got:

Bus 004 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0a81:0203 Chesen Electronics Corp. Mouse
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 006: ID 0403:6001 Future Technology Devices International, Ltd 8-bit FIFO
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 413c:8000 Dell Computer Corp.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

It is easy to spot the adapter’s additional details. The ID shows the vendor id and the product id of the USB-Serial adapter. With this we can load the linux kernel module “usbserial” to activate the device, thus:

sudo modprobe usbserial vendor=0×0403 product=0×6001

Now run “dmesg” again. My output was this:

/build/buildd/linux-source-2.6.22-2.6.22/drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial support registered for FTDI USB Serial Device
ftdi_sio 1-1:1.0: FTDI USB Serial Device converter detected
usbcore: registered new interface driver ftdi_sio
usb 1-1: FTDI USB Serial Device converter now attached to ttyUSB0

Next instruct Ubuntu to load the module automatically. Include the correct version of the following line in /etc/modules:

usbserial vendor=0×0403 product=0×6001

Fixing a Common Problem in Using ttyUSB0

Something I didn’t mention was that I also got this line further down and apart from the others:

ftdi_sio ttyUSB0: FTDI USB Serial Device converter now disconnected from ttyUSB0

I didn’t know why this was happening. I also found I couldn’t run anything on ttyUSB0 using Minicom or Gtkterm. Also, in the output from dmesg I noticed references to brltty. I presumed that was the culprit.

Go into Synaptic package manager and uninstall these packages:

brltty
brltty-flite
brltty-x11

But if you are a blind person, you may need them, and it would be a miracle that you just read this sentence. It is beyond me why Ubuntu distributions come with software for the blind as a default, especially when it is going to infere with other devices. Default software should be based on majority use.

Use Gkterm to Quickly Communicate With a Meade Telescope

Fire up or install Gkterm

sudo apt-get install gkterm

Find Ports under the menu and configure it to use /dev/ttyUSB0. Set hardware and software flow control to “No” and Bps/Par/Bits parameter to 9600 8N1. Make sure “Local Echo” is enabled.

Now in the terminal simply do a ctrl-f and you should see an “A” appear.

That means you’ve got a connection. You’re good to go.

Similarly Using Minicom to Communicate With a Celestron Nexstar Telescope

Here’s another method for using Minicom (although you could just as easily use Gkterm) to communicate with a Celeron Nexstar. This is from another source I forget.

In a terminal, as root, open minicom with the -s flag, to set the configuration. Once inside minicom, go to the “Serial port setup.”

Change the Serial Device to the one that you are using (most probably /dev/ttyS0 or /dev/ttyS1), set hardware and software flow control to “No”, and the Bps/Par/Bits parameter to 9600 8N1. Once you have done this, save the setup as a dfl file (in the same main menu), and exit Minicom.

Once you have configured Minicom, launch it without flags. Once inside, you can enable or disable the local echoing, so you can or cannot see what you type in the terminal. And, finally, you can type the commands directly into the terminal.

For example, to test the connection, type “Kx” and it return a “x#” from the telescope.

Note that all these commands specified here are run as root, but not necessarily must be run like him. If you want to gain access to the serial port as a simple user, you have several alternatives:

Give permissions to all users to read/write the device:

chmod 666 /dev/ttyS0

Change the ownership of the device to the specific user:

chown user.group /dev/ttyS0

Include the user in the group that owns the device. In Fedora, its the uucp group, in Debian, the dialout group. In both cases, you must edit the /etc/groups file to include the user into the group. After that, give read/write permissions to the group for the device.

chmod 664 /dev/ttyS0

This solution is a better approach for the problem.

With any of these changes, the simple user user will be able to read/write the device without special permissions. Even with this changes, the Minicom configuration must be done as root, because this configuration is saved as the system’s default, and you need special permission to write those files.

LX90 with Stellarium on the laptop

Here is my modest home observatory. It’s certainly less than ideal and might represent one of the world’s worst observatories, with much of the sky out of view and located in a city with a lot of air pollution.

Nice view, shame about the light polution

There is also a high level of light pollution to deal with. However, it is still possible to get spectacular views of the Moon and Jupiter and one can make the Orion Nebula.

Taken from the rabbits' side of the balcony