Scattered Thoughts . . .

I 'm still mending a sprained MCL in my right knee so I'm still not really accomplishing much on my To-Do list.  Every now and then, however, I feel halfway decent and am able to jump into a small little project at the kitchen table.  This still needs to be short because I need to keep changing positions...  no sitting for a long period of time, no standing for a long period of time.  This keeps the size of these occasional projects on the very small side.  Plus, the longer I work on any project, the more likely I am to do something stupid with my knee.  The last thing I want at this point is to be set back to square one yet again.   I have this old Celestron 70mm refractor telescope that, in recent years, I adapted to a different type of mount.  In order to do that upgrade, I needed to remove a bunch of mounting hardware that was bolted through the optical tube.  This hardware wasn't needed and was in the way of the new mounting cradle ...

When I looked outside this morning, it was sunny and clear. That's a rarity around these parts! I also noticed that the moon was still in the sky. It was getting close to the horizon and setting fast but, if I was quick about it, I could pull the small telescope outside and do a quick test by observing the moon.  I quickly set the little telescope on our stone walkway and pointed it toward the moon... I turned the focusing knobs... the moon came into crisp focus! So that means that all the upgrading and rebuilding I did in recent weeks produced a far better telescope. This was good news. As I mentioned above, the moon was setting quickly so I was attempting to use my slow motion knobs to constantly adjust the mount to keep the telescope pointed at the moon... it would track slightly and then when I let go it would spring back toward where I started from when I first started turning these knobs. This would happen over and over until the moon was too low in the sky.  My ...