Scattered Thoughts . . .

We've had a few new regular visitors to our backyard lately but this morning was the first time I had any luck in capturing a photo of these new visitors.   We have a couple of rabbits who now visit regularly but I haven't been able to get any photos of them.  We also have a large pileated woodpecker who visits the yard daily but he has been very skittish whenever I have tried to get close with my camera.   Our other regular visitor is a ground hog and I managed to capture a photo of him this morning through one of our windows.  I tried to step outdoors to get the photo but he was about to run off due to the tiny bit of noise I made with the door so I opted to shoot through a closed window and window screen.  This made for a rather blurry image but the image is still decent.   When I first noticed him in the yard this morning as I was walking past our living room window, I thought he was one of the neighborhood cats.  When I went to the back door to step outside, I realized thi

T he other day, I went out to the shed in the rain to cut out a couple of aperture masks for my small 50mm guide scope.  I want to try to use this guide scope as an imaging scope for imaging the full disk of the sun.  I have previously worked out a potential configuration to do the same using my 72mm ED refractor but I want to compare the two and then continue to use the one that produces the best images.   I need these aperture masks because I need the guide scope's focal ratio to be in the f5 to f6.5 range.  Without these aperture masks, my guide scope is at f3.2 which is too fast for this particular use.  I'm using my Quark Chromosphere solar filter so I need the focal ratio to be between f4 and f8.  I'm thinking that closer to f4 might be better for capturing prominences while closer to f8 will be better for capturing details on the 'surface' of the chromosphere.  This surface isn't really a hard surface though...  it is a surface of plasma gas in the form o

I built a dolly for my sailboat about ten years ago or so.  This dolly resembles a boat trailer but, rather than being made out of galvanized steel and being roadworthy, it is simply made out of wood and meant only as a safe way to move the boat around the backyard as well as a place to keep the boat in the backyard.  This dolly was well worth the time and effort in building it. Over the years, one of the axles has bent causing the wheel to bind against the frame of the dolly.  This binding definitely defeats the purpose of the dolly.  The dolly was meant to provide a very easy way of moving the boat around when necessary and that has become quite difficult with one of the wheels binding. Truth be told, this is another one of those small projects that I have had on my to-do list for a couple of years but I kept putting it off.  Well, I tackled this project yesterday and now I can move the sailboat anywhere in the yard with ease.   In the coming weeks, I hope to clean the boat and wax