Scattered Thoughts . . .

It is always a memorable event when you set up a new telescope outside and peer through the eyepiece to see the first light coming through the scope... tonight was one such night for me! When we arrived back home from the hospital tonight after another visit to Miss Ellie in the PICU, I immediately started setting up my new telescope in our driveway. Well... truth be told, it is about a month old now but I hadn't had a chance to observe the night sky before tonight. Tonight would be first light through this telescope.  Setup required about eight trips in and out of the house. I need to find a way to consolidate all the little odds and ends to make this task a bit easier and faster. Then I had to set up the scope... level it... align it with Polaris... then do an additional alignment on one to three additional stars. This went fairly well but I plan to do a bit more practicing on this because my alignment was off a little bit. Plus, I couldn't figure out how to slew using th

The little bit I was awake today, I spent in Simulation Sessions learning how to use my telescope autoguider. Both Sheila and I have been exhausted for months so most of our free time seems to be spent sleeping but I managed to spend some time doing some simulations within the software for this telescope autoguider.  I'm making some headway with the software package... PHD2... which, apparently, stands for 'Push Here Dummy'. Today I managed to get through about a dozen simulations... most were effective simulations, some simulations were not so effective. Tomorrow, I hope to get through a few tutorials as well as more simulations.  Although I was in simulations today, I did assemble everything in the living room... cables running from cameras to computer and to the telescope mount. Things are becoming clearer and clearer in my mind but I will admit that I don't fully understand every aspect of this software package just yet so, when I do run into problems, I find my

I was revisiting some photos from last summer at the lake house since that time of year is fast approaching. This is the time of year when I think about what I hope to accomplish with my photography skills while at the lake. Once I know my goals for the summer, I evaluate my gear... then swap gear I don't need for gear I do need. Ultra-wide angle lenses are needed in tight spaces especially when there is an expansive landscape right outside. My gear is weak in two areas... the two extremes... ultra-wide angle and super-telephoto. For now, I am focused on my ultra-wide lens options. Wildlife photography is always a top priority and that is where the super-telephoto lens comes into play. Capturing Sheila and the grandkids is also a priority topping my list and this involves some portrait lenses... I am covered fairly well here. Landscape photography, including the night sky, is also an area I would like to improve and this involves ultra-wide lenses.  Part of this evaluat

For a change, the weather in my neck of the woods cooperated with an astronomical event! That alone is a rarity. Even more surprising is that my health cooperated as well! The chances of all of this coming together were slim. I had set up a couple of my cameras earlier in the day. I charged and tested batteries. I chose two lenses... one for each camera. I chose the appropriate tripod head and mounted it on my tripod. Then, I waited. Sheila's parents stopped by for a few drinks before dinner which was nice and occupied my time as we waited for nightfall. We ate dinner, cleaned up and then I noticed the full moon was brightly lighting up the sky outside our living room window. At this point, I was running low on energy so, rather than hauling all this gear outdoors to a good viewing spot, I just set up the tripod at the living room window and shot out the open window.  The problem with shooting from this particular window is that I knew that the moon would eventually skirt b

The moon... crisp, clear skies with no light pollution help in capturing some crisp crater detail. For the most part, the weather at the lake has been beautiful. Most of the clouds and rain have been at night. Getting the rainy weather only at night has been great and makes for a lot of beautiful, sunny days but it really puts a damper on any photography of the night skies. Fortunately, we did have a few nights of clear weather at night... very few. On one such night, I grabbed my tripod, my best camera, a couple of good lenses, and a wireless remote shutter release and headed outside to the dark and very buggy deck. One of the newer cameras I have been using is amazing for low-light work but I am still learning what it can do and trying to figure out how to do different things such as shooting night skies. The unique thing about shooting night skies is that each exposure requires a few minutes plus a couple of minutes of adjusting settings... over and over... until you get