u/hymie0

The Howard Astronomical League will hold its monthly Public Star Party on Saturday, August 22, starting around Sundown (or possibly earlier). Our Observatory will be open, and HAL members will be out with our telescopes sharing views of the night sky.

This event is held rain or shine (except for severe summer thunderstorms) at Alpha Ridge Park in Marriottsville, just minutes from I-70. This event is free and open to the public.

https://howardastro.org/hal-star-parties-and-outreach/

Greetings. Hardware isn't my strong suit, so I hope somebody can give me a push.

I'm running Slackware 15 from a November 2025 "-current" ISO. I have the mesa-21.3.5-x86_64-2 package loaded. Assorted programs like glxgears run, but Stellarium isn't, and I'm hoping to fix that.

glxinfo tells me

>OpenGL renderer string: llvmpipe (LLVM 13.0.0, 256 bits)

and I'm told that's "software acceleration", rather than "hardware acceleration".

lscpi tells me

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Device 7d45 (rev 08) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])

Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 8c66

Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 173, IOMMU group 0

Memory at 4818000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=16M]

Memory at 4000000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]

Expansion ROM at 000c0000 [virtual] [disabled] [size=128K]

Capabilities: [40] Vendor Specific Information: Len=0c <?>

Capabilities: [70] Express Root Complex Integrated Endpoint, MSI 00

Capabilities: [ac] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable+ 64bit+

Capabilities: [d0] Power Management version 3

Capabilities: [100] Null

Capabilities: [110] Process Address Space ID (PASID)

Capabilities: [200] Address Translation Service (ATS)

Capabilities: [420] Physical Resizable BAR

Capabilities: [320] Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV)

Capabilities: [400] Latency Tolerance Reporting

Kernel driver in use: i915

Kernel modules: i915

and I'm not sure what I have to do (or what I can do) to get hardware acceleration running.

I found three packages with the word "intel" in them

Package: a/intel-microcode-20250812-noarch-1.txz

Package: x/intel-vaapi-driver-2.4.1-x86_64-3.txz

Package: x/xf86-video-intel-20230201_b74b67f0-x86_64-1.txz

but have not yet loaded any of them. They don't seem to be obviously relevant, but (again) I'm not qualified. Do I need these?

If somebody can give me a hint as to what packages / modules / firmware I might need to load, I'd appreciate it.

First and foremost -- NEVER look at the sun, especially with binoculars or a telescope, without proper eye protection. Regular store-bought sunglasses are NOT sufficient protection to look at the Sun.

The Howard Astronomical League will hold a Public Sun Party on Wednesday August 12 from noon-ish until 4pm-ish. Our Observatory will be open, and HAL members will be out with our telescopes safely sharing views of the Sun.

There will be a partial Solar Eclipse from about 1:30pm until 2:30pm. Let me be clear, this is not a particularly exciting eclipse. If you still have your Solar Glasses from the last one, you almost certainly won't notice it. The solar disk coverage will be less than 4%

https://preview.redd.it/fi3rxuqttjih1.png?width=613&format=png&auto=webp&s=8508307778c60f9d2f654fa6cb6cb6704258bcac

But we invite you to join us with our safe telescopes enjoying views of the Sun.

This event is held rain or shine (except for severe summer thunderstorms) at Alpha Ridge Park in Marriottsville, just minutes from I-70. This event is free and open to the public.

https://howardastro.org/hal-star-parties-and-outreach/

And remember: NEVER look at the sun, especially with binoculars or a telescope, without proper eye protection. Regular store-bought sunglasses are NOT sufficient protection to look at the Sun.

The Howard Astronomical League will hold its monthly Public Star Party on Saturday, July 25, starting around Sundown (or possibly earlier). Our Observatory will be open, and HAL members will be out with our telescopes sharing views of the night sky.

This event is held rain or shine (except for severe summer thunderstorms) at Alpha Ridge Park in Marriottsville, just minutes from I-70. This event is free and open to the public.

https://howardastro.org/hal-star-parties-and-outreach/

The Howard Astronomical League will hold its monthly Public Star Party on Saturday, June 20, starting around Sundown (or possibly earlier). Our Observatory will be open, and HAL members will be out with our telescopes sharing views of the night sky.

This event is held rain or shine (except for severe summer thunderstorms) at Alpha Ridge Park in Marriottsville, just minutes from I-70. This event is free and open to the public.

The weather is looking better this weekend, and we may have a couple of Sungazers in the early evening.

https://howardastro.org/hal-star-parties-and-outreach/

The Howard Astronomical League will hold its monthly Public Star Party on Saturday, May 23, starting around Sundown (or possibly earlier). Our Observatory will be open, and HAL members will be out with our telescopes sharing views of the night sky.

This event is held rain or shine at Alpha Ridge Park in Marriottsville, just minutes from I-70. This event is free and open to the public.

https://howardastro.org/hal-star-parties-and-outreach/