Scattered Thoughts . . .

Whenever I'm observing the night sky (as opposed to imaging the night sky), I use a diagonal placed into my focuser.  The diagonal reflects the light that is streaming through the telescope to a 90° angle making it easier to view through the telescope.  Some diagonals are at 45° but those are mostly used for terrestrial observing where the telescope is mostly horizontal or level.  The eyepiece is placed into the diagonal and, due to the diagonal reflecting the light  90°, the top of the eyepiece  is now pointing upward making it easier to look down into the eyepiece.  This is the purpose of the diagonal...  to direct the light to the eyepiece at a position that is easier for viewing. If you had no diagonal to change the direction of the light, you would need to crane your neck to view straight through the telescope.  Sometimes you would even need to be sitting or lying on the ground to view the sky through the telescope if not using a diagonal.  A diagonal makes it easier to view

The weather has been lousy this week so I've been indoors.  As luck would have it, for a change, my health is also lousy as I continue to rebound from the side-effects of my last Shingles vaccine so not much has been lost solely due to the lousy weather this time around.  I'd be stuck inside anyway due to my poor health.  It's worth noting that it is rare when the weather and my health are in sync like this!  Regardless of the lousy weather and lousy health, I have managed to do some much needed organization of astronomy gear a little bit each day over the past couple of mornings.  I'd do a little bit...  take a break...  do a bit more...  take another break...  go back to it the following morning...  take a break...  etc.   My first priority was to find and purchase a couple of heavy duty cases for two of my mount heads.  I purchased a large sized case for my smaller mount head and an extra large case for the larger, heavier mount head.  I had also ordered some close