maurycyz-com

An astrophotographer's image of Stephan's Quintet shows one galaxy is a foreground interloper, while the others exhibit tidal interactions including a collision remnant and a stretched tidal plume. The image was captured over three nights with a C9.25 telescope.

An amateur astrophotographer captured Arp 38, a small edge-on spiral galaxy. Despite Arp's classification as having a low-surface-brightness companion, Hubble data shows the bright spot north of the galaxy's core is merely a bright HII region and star cluster, not a companion galaxy.

Astrophotographer Maurycy captured interacting galaxies Arp 293 (NGC 6285 and NGC 6286) along with neighboring galaxy UGC 10641, all at similar redshift, indicating a gravitationally bound trio. A distant galaxy cluster (LEDA 2582489) at z≈0.11 also appeared in the field. The 2.8-hour exposure suffered from walking noise due to guiding issues after the meridian flip.

A glassblower built a better homemade thermionic vacuum diode by surrounding the filament with an anode. The tube, sealed in borosilicate glass, achieved several milliamps forward current and 22 nA reverse leakage at 200 V. After 24 hours, performance remained unchanged, though unusual high-temperature behavior may indicate gas discharge.

An image of Arp 29, the "fireworks galaxy," shows a peculiar galaxy with bright star formation, HII regions, a star cluster, and ten observed supernovae. Its light is partially blocked by dust, and its distance is uncertain at roughly 10-30 million light-years.

A hobbyist documents making a simple incandescent lamp by sealing a tungsten filament inside a glass tube under vacuum, and experiments with a crude vacuum diode that shows poor thermionic emission performance due to trapped gases in the tungsten and the small anode area.

Astrophotographer Maurycy Z captured Arp 114, featuring interacting galaxies NGC 2276 and NGC 2300, over 3.2 hours across two nights. The article discusses the unusual spiral structure of NGC 2276, possibly caused by high-speed motion through gas or gravitational interaction with NGC 2300, and notes technical imaging details and observing challenges.

The article argues against replacing real HTML links with JavaScript buttons, as real links support opening in new tabs, copying URLs, and accessibility tools. It also warns against reinventing browser features like date pickers, loading animations, and <details>, and criticizes infinite scrolling for breaking bookmarks and the back button.

An astrophotographer captured the galaxy group Arp 297 (including NGC 5754, 5752, 5755, and 5753) using a C9.25 telescope over 3.4 hours of exposure. The image shows gravitationally interacting spiral galaxies at different redshifts, with notes on tidal tails and a third group member hidden behind NGC 5752.

A hobbyist documents experiments making vacuum-tight glass-to-metal seals for homemade vacuum tubes using borosilicate glass. After testing copper, iron, plated steel, tungsten, foil, and disc seals, they find tungsten wire up to 0.7 mm and thin copper disc seals work, with thermal expansion mismatch as the main challenge.

An astrophotographer presents an image of Arp 185, a barred spiral galaxy with irregular arms and a faint extended disk, noting a slight misalignment between the bar and core that suggests a past gravitational interaction. The image was taken with a C9.25 telescope over 2.2 hours during poor seeing conditions (FWHM 5") attributed to nearby heat sources like asphalt road and roof.

Practical guide on optimizing battery life: understanding non-ideal battery behavior (internal resistance, voltage droop, aging), measuring ultra-low currents, and selecting components to maximize runtime, especially with coin cells.

Astrophotographer Maurycy Z captured NGC 4236, a barred spiral galaxy with uneven arms, using a C9.25 telescope over multiple nights totaling 1.5 hours of stacked exposure. The image also reveals a nearby, uncatalogued galaxy cluster. Due to the galaxy's low surface brightness and limited darkness, data was collected across several nights but was hampered by forgetting the dew shield.

The author tested five search engines and ChatGPT on five technical queries. None produced consistently good results; most returned blogspam, incorrect AI summaries, or irrelevant links. Good results in the top three were only about fifty-fifty, and the author concludes modern search results are truly poor.

A hobbyist salvaged vacuum fluorescent display (VFD) tubes from an old calculator and built a custom clock. The project involved reverse-engineering the tube pinout, designing a multiplexed driver circuit with a MOSFET and microcontroller, and using a 32.768 kHz crystal for accurate timekeeping. The finished clock was mounted in a CNC-milled wooden enclosure.

An AVR64DD32 microcontroller (8-bit, $1, 64 kB flash) was turned into a web server using SLIP over a USB serial adapter and a wired Ethernet-like connection to a Linux machine. Custom minimal TCP/IP and a hardcoded HTTP response allow it to serve a single page, which is proxied over WireGuard to a public VPS for internet access.

The author presents GopherTree, a Gopher client that displays menus as directory trees rather than web-like interfaces. The client hides informational selectors by default and fits within a thousand lines of C code. It includes features like a built-in text viewer, bookmarks, and aims to avoid the distraction of hypertext browsing.

The author has made their website available via the Gopher protocol, which uses simple text-based menus for navigation instead of hyperlinks. They explain Gopher's directory-style format and contrast it with modern web protocols, noting its historical interest and simplicity compared to alternatives like Gemini.

The article explains how TCP's initial congestion window of 10 packets results in approximately 13 kB of data being transferred in the first round trip. This occurs because TCP uses slow start to avoid network congestion, gradually increasing transmission speed. The author suggests web developers should ensure critical content fits within this initial 13 kB for optimal page loading.

The author explains that IPv4 addresses have been exhausted since 2011, leading to multiple users sharing addresses and causing problems like IP blocking. IPv6 with 128-bit addresses was standardized in 1995 but adoption remains low. To encourage IPv6 adoption, the author will disable IPv4 access to their site on the 6th of each month.

The MCUfont is a 5x5 pixel font designed for tiny screens on microcontrollers. It fits within 350 bytes of memory and maintains legibility while allowing constant-width character rendering. The font is based on earlier 5x6 designs and works well on low-resolution displays.