Scattered Thoughts . . .

F or a few days there, it was looking like Waterbury was the place to be for the solar eclipse.  Tomorrow is the big day.   I set up a couple of telescopes this afternoon and we did a bit of solar observing with Lukey and Kenzie.  We also spent some time explaining things about the sun, moon and Earth using some visual props.  Today was a beautiful day.  It was clear and would have been a great day to observe an eclipse.   I just checked tomorrow's forecast to see if anything has changed...  well, now things aren't looking so great anymore for tomorrow after around noon.  We could still get lucky but we could also be socked in under overcast skies.  The truth is, I had forecast that this new weather system would hit us on eclipse day but none of the forecasts were indicating the same so I was hoping my forecast would be wrong.  Now...  things are iffy and the forecast is looking more like my own forecast that I had compiled about four days ago.   It was nice to be outside with

S ince it appears as though our weather will be great for the solar eclipse, I've been focused on getting all my astronomy and photography gear prepped for the big couple of minutes of total solar eclipse.   I also raked the part of the backyard where we will be setting up for the total eclipse.  Everything seemed to be going well and then we had well over a foot of heavy, wet snow dumped on us...  again.  The same thing happened less than a week earlier! So, two large amounts of snow followed immediately by temperatures in the 40s and 50s...  extra showers after getting soaked in sweat due to cleaning up the yard, driveway, paths and backyard, then extra loads of laundry to clean the sweat-soaked clothing, then Saturday came along when Sheila cleans the sheets and does all of her own laundry...  this resulted in a backed-up septic system.  Naturally, it is a weekend and we don't want to call to have the septic pumped out on the weekend so we're making-do with a very slow a

A bout a week ago, I wrote about an eclipse viewer that I made out of a discarded cardboard box for us to use during our upcoming eclipse.  I adapted this old shipping box to become a pinhole projection viewer.  The sun is projected through a pinhole and onto a screen at the bottom/back of the box so the person viewing the sun isn't looking directly at the sun but is instead looking at a screen with the sun projected onto it.  Actually, the sun in the sky is at the viewer's back so the person isn't even facing toward the sun.  There is no getting blinded by the sun using this little homemade viewer. This little project turned out well.  I have a large cutout to peer into the box toward the screen at the opposite end of the box and another cutout to mount a pinhole plate made of black construction paper.  Making the pinhole in construction paper made it quick and easy to test different sizes of pinholes.  After some experimentation, I sized the pinhole at 1/4 inch and that s

As expected, April's weather forecast has changed.  Unfortunately, it has not changed in the way we need.  Now, rather than there being only three clear days forecast for April, there are zero clear days in all of April!   It is not looking good for any sort of astronomy in April.   Of course, we could get extremely lucky and get a few hours of clear skies in the early afternoon of the eighth...  from 2pm to 4:30pm...  I'm not holding my breath though.

I haven't written anything here in quite some time. Well...  quite some time for me. Unfortunately, I'm still struggling with getting my health back to a stable place and I've been feeling so miserable that finding the right words and staying focused on what I am attempting to write is difficult. Staying on topic and staying focused on any task is almost impossible but I'm also having difficulty writing in a positive way so I've actually been avoiding writing here. You'll see what I mean as you continue reading this blog entry...  We went up to Stowe to meet up with some friends almost three weeks ago... I can't believe that was almost three weeks ago. It seems like last weekend! We had a great time and it was really  nice getting out of the house for a change but I felt quite lousy within an hour of being out. My health only worsened over the next few hours during dinner... pain, nausea and overwhelming fatigue... and now, even though I thought I was fin