Scattered Thoughts . . .

This past weekend...  a holiday weekend with an absurd amount of traffic and gridlock due to leaf peeping tourism...  we made our annual trek to The Christmas Loft with Lukey and Kenzie.  We headed northward earlier than most people were out and about so, for the most part, we stayed ahead of the crowds.   The scenery was typical autumn scenery...  like we are in an artificial Willy Wonka world of funky, overly fiery assortments of brightly saturated colors that appear more like infrared photography or false-color photography or someone's nightmare than real life.  To be honest, I prefer the late spring season for more awe-inspiring scenery.  Autumn looks a bit too wildly psychedelic   for me  (should be more appropriately spelled " psycho -delic" if you ask me).  Springtime after everything begins to bloom looks more natural and colorful.  Springtime colors are in distinct shades of light green to dark green with pastel shad...

We have a fairly significant astronomical event fast approaching so I've been trying to get ready for it in case, by some miracle, we have clear skies here.  If we go by statistical data about our climate here on the flats nestled between multiple ski resorts and mountains tells me that the chances that I will have clear skies are relatively slim but I'm hopeful.  On the morning of November 11th, we will have a rare opportunity to watch Mercury transit across the face of the sun.   Mercury is tiny compared to the size of the sun so this isn't anything that will be noticed with the naked eye but it can be seen through a solar telescope if the sky is clear.  I feel the need to make it crystal clear that you must use a solar telescope and not a typical nighttime telescope unless you want to be painfully blinded.   The sun is actually 277 times larger than the size of Mercury so Mercury will only appear as a tiny dot silhouetted in front of the su...