Scattered Thoughts . . .

O ur homemade Giant Jenga game is now ready for playing in our backyard! After I finished sanding all the 2x4 pieces with 220 grit sandpaper (which was after 80 grit and 120 grit), I waxed every piece and then polished the wax until it was smooth and slick.  I also waxed the top of the leveling base.  Now every piece is very smooth and looks nothing like a typical framing 2x4 which is how this wood started!  Each of these pieces started very rough when I first cut the 2x4s to length.  Now they are looking nothing like a typical framing 2x4. For some reason, I thought that the relatively easy process of applying wax and then polishing it would go very quickly but, as usual as my health worsens and I get older, I was very wrong in my time estimate.   I think the waxing required even more of my time than sanding with the last grit of sandpaper did and that took far longer than I anticipated!   I found that I could only wax and polish 12 of the pieces in an hour.  There are 54 pieces so th

I had written previously about finally finding a configuration of gear that makes full disk solar observing far more enjoyable than without this new configuration of solar gear.  The purpose of this blog entry is more about documenting this new and unusual configuration so I can duplicate it again each time I want to observe the full disk of the sun with my Quark solar filter.  Of course, I have this configuration documented in my notes too but I figured it would be good to document it here as well.   My larger telescopes provide more closeup views but I like to see the whole disk as well.  In order to improve my full disk view, I had to play around with a few ideas on how I could possibly accomplish this.  I kept going back to my assortment of astronomy components to assemble different configurations.  Then I had to play around with spacing.  It was a fairly long process of trial and error based upon the knowledge I had gained through experience but I eventually hit upon the right co

W hen I was out testing a new solar astronomy gear configuration a few days ago, I had a problem with my focuser slipping.  This was caused by two factors...  first, this new configuration put a lot of weight on the focuser...  and second, at the time, I was viewing the sun at its highest point in the sky at noon.  This orientation made it easier for the focuser to slip downward toward the ground.   When I brought the gear back indoors, I tried to adjust some of the setscrews underneath the focuser but, honestly, I had no idea what any of the setscrews did.  You would think that you want all of them as tight as possible but that is completely wrong in this case.  I had to do some research. While in bed that night, I did some research on my Kindle.  I found a thread in an astronomy forum about adjusting this focuser.  I wanted to get out of bed right away to fix this focuser but I wisely memorized the page and then went to sleep instead.   The next evening I pulled out this little teles