Scattered Thoughts . . .

We gave Lukey a new steam locomotive for his birthday.  When he first drove it on his layout, the locomotive would slip and slip and slip.  If it was pulling any cars whatsoever, it would lose traction and stall while the wheels would continue to spin.  After cleaning the track...  and cleaning the wheels of the locomotive...  we determined that we needed to add something to the wheels to help add traction.  This is when I decided to give Bullfrog Snot a try so I placed an order online.   The Bullfrog Snot arrived within days but today was the first chance that Lukey and I had to apply this new sticky green stuff. We place the locomotive upside-down and cradled in a towel and applied some power to the wheels so they would turn.  Then we cleaned the wheels again so the Bullfrog Snot would stick to the wheels as best as possible and then started applying this sticky green goo called Bullfrog Snot. We let it run for about a half hour, ups

This morning, the sun was shining brightly and the sky was cloudless with good visibility so I asked Lukey if he wanted to look at the sun for a little while.  After we set up the telescope and all the associated gear for solar astronomy, we found the sun in the telescope.  We talked a little bit about sunspots, what they are and why there are none visible today.  I explained that we're in the middle of the 11 year solar cycle which is the long period of relatively little activity on the sun.   Since there wasn't much to look at and discuss, we then we swapped out the eyepiece for one of my cameras so Lukey could shoot a few photos... Lukey picked up the remote shutter release and shot his first astrophotography images... He shot just two photos but they came out very nicely!   They were both the same so I'm only sharing one of them here.   The seeing was good this particular morning so we were able to capture some faint hints of the convection cells bubbling to the surface