Scattered Thoughts . . .

Sheila and I were out in the yard this morning looking for signs of bear damage.  Through our windows this morning, we noticed that a bear had gotten into our neighbor's garbage bins during the night and the garbage was strewn all over our next door neighbor's yard.  The garbage bins were across the street but all the garbage ended up in our next door neighbor's yard.   Also, as we were closing up the doors and windows before going to bed last night (so bears don't climb through our screens into the house), Sheila saw a very young fox in our yard.  So, we headed outside this morning to see if the bear had attempted to get into our trash shed and to see if there were any other signs of wildlife having visited our yard last night. While I was walking around our trash shed looking for big paw-prints or new deep gouges on our trash shed   (we do have some old gouges from bear claws) , I noticed a red-tailed hawk in a tree behind our house.  The hawk was at the top of a dead

After I finished converting my old EXOS2-GoTo tracking mount into a fully manual mount, I went outside to check on the gardens around the house.  I noticed that the moon was in the sky!  I don't remember the last time I saw the moon in the sky and I know I haven't observed the moon through any of my telescopes since last fall.  I decided to head back inside to grab one of my grab-and-go telescopes...  a small telescope on a lightweight tripod.   This particular telescope is a Skywatcher 72mm ED refractor.  It is small and lightweight but has excellent optics.  I often use this same telescope for solar astronomy.  One of these nights, if we ever have a clear night when I am feeling well enough, I hope to do some nighttime imaging with it too.   When I stepped outside with the telescope, the first thing I noticed was a bird up high in a nearby tree so I pointed the telescope at this bird....  it was a dove and the view of this bird was surprisingly crisp.  I was actually hoping t