Scattered Thoughts . . .

I missed the lunar eclipse the other night even though I spent some time during the previous two weeks collecting the necessary gear from storage, ensuring everything is in working order, and planning the shots I wanted.   Unfortunately, I was feeling quite lousy after fixing our neighbor's roof and the weather wasn't ideal for this eclipse project anyway.  We seem to miss most astronomical events here in Waterbury due to what could easily be classified as abysmal Pacific Northwest-type of weather so I can truly say I am not the least bit surprised by another hazy night turning into a cloudy, foggy night.   On the following night, the moon was shining through our living room window so I grabbed one of my cameras and a lens so I could shoot a few photos through the open window.   I've been trying to use my micro four-thirds cameras more often lately so that is what I did on this night.  I don't know why I keeping attempting to shoot photos with th...

W e have a total lunar eclipse occurring in our area next week so I've been preparing for it.   I decided it would be best to shoot photos of this eclipse through my Explore Scientific APO 102mm refractor telescope.  I'll mount this telescope on my good tracking mount so the telescope will track the moon through the night.  I also decided to use my best camera...  my Sony a7RIIIa. I set up this combination of equipment in the living room this morning so I could test everything.  I set this up early because I wanted to know if I need any extension tubes to get the camera to focus.  It turns out that I actually needed to remove an extension tube.  It is more convenient to get all of this out of the way before I'm outside in the dark and cold.   Below is a photo showing the view through this telescope using this camera.  This is the ridge of a mountaintop quite a distance away (2-3 miles away?)... Unfortunately, all of this is likely ...

W hile Sheila and I were discussing our upcoming Amtrak journey with Lukey and Kenzie, I had to dig through old photos to figure out something about a previous Amtrak trip.  (That's one of the advantages of shooting so many photos and keeping them stored on external hard drives...  they become records of all we do, when we did it, and where we were located at a specific time.) During this search for Amtrak photos, I scrolled through all of my photos from 2018 and 2019.  In one of these daily folders, I found a photo of the moon that I don't think I had shared previously so I figured I would share it. I purposely rotated this image for a different perspective than we normally see from Earth and I'm liking how it looks.   When I came across this image, I was surprised by its clarity.  As best as I can tell, I think I shot this image through my Explore Scientific 102mm APO telescope and captured the image using my Sony a6000 camera mounted on the telescope's f...

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...

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 bi...

My health is still quite lousy, overall, and has been this way since January.  I believe that Sheila and I both contracted this pandemic virus and, lately, I've been bouncing back and forth between fever and fever-free.  Sheila recovered relatively quickly but I'm struggling to recover.  That isn't much of a surprise, however, considering my primary health issues.   Needless to say, I've had very little energy to accomplish anything of significance.  Actually, I've been doing a lot of sleeping.  On the rare occasion when I'm feeling well enough to think clearly, one of the things I have done is revisit some old lunar images I shot from our yard.   In this case, about two years ago, I shot a series of images with the intent of stacking the images to create a super-resolution final image.  This is a post-processing technique similar to high-resolution pixel shift technology in some cameras that produces high resolution images....

Actually, this month's Pink Moon isn't named as such because it appears pink.  It is named the Pink Moon for the April blooming of the Ground Phlox which is a pink flower.  Anyway, tonight's moon was quite colorless from our neck of the woods as it rose over the Worcester Range.  It was, however, quite large.  I think this is the full moon that is closest to Earth for this calendar year, if I remember correctly, which would make it a so-called supermoon.   I shot this photo through our opened living room window.  Convenient, huh?  Since it was a last second decision to shoot this full moon, I didn't quite get all my camera settings set correctly.  Within a couple of minutes, the moon was moving behind some utility lines and then trees.  This image will have to do... For those interested in the technical aspects of this image...  I shot this with my little Sony a6000 camera body and my Canon L 400mm f5.6 lens mounted on a trip...

Imaged through a Celestron 70mm refractor. Back a couple of months ago, I wrote about rebuilding a cheap telescope we had lying around collecting dust and taking up space in our small home. I had rebuilt it using old parts from another cheap, useless telescope we threw away as well as a few new parts to increase the quality of this cheap telescope. Overall, I spent about $350 upgrading this telescope which could have bought me a decent telescope but then I would have thrown this telescope in the trash bin as well. I felt it was worth trying to rebuilt it and upgrade it so the grandkids could use it occasionally. For some quick, easy views of the night sky, this rebuilt telescope has proven to be a decent scope... not a great scope... but it is decent.  This telescope and mount is relatively lightweight and small which makes it easy to just grab and go out to the yard and that is a definite plus. As mentioned before, since I rebuilt it and upgraded it, this telescope now prov...

Sony a6000, Canon 400mm f5.6 L lens               First, while my dislocated thumb heals I'm limited in what I can get accomplished around the house so I wanted to write a little bit about a photo of the full moon that I shot a few months ago.  I belong to a few different astrophotography and astronomy groups and someone was asking about lenses for photographing the moon so I helped them out with a few tips. Afterward, I got to thinking that the info I shared with that astronomy group would probably be good to share here too.  The main reason for the request for help was to help the person choose a lens that would be good for photographing the moon. For this type of photography, most people recommend a 70-300mm lens but I've never been happy shooting with a standard 70-300mm lens. That being said, I have managed to get a few decent shots over the years using a 70-300mm lens on a smaller 4/3-sized sensor. The advantage of the sm...

I finished post-processing the two remaining sets of images from my first telescope observations with my new telescope. For a "first light" observation session with a new telescope... and never having done any astrophotography previously... these images turned out quite well! These two resulting images (each at a super-resolution of 96 megapixels) provide a much closer look at Montes Apenninus... a lunar mountain range named after the Apennine Mountains in Italy.  This rugged lunar mountain range towers to almost 18,000 feet in height. The total length of the mountain range is approximately 370 miles. I point this out because most people assume that the moon is relatively level and dotted with craters simply by its appearance from Earth. The reality is that the moon has a mostly hilly, rolling landscape and, obviously, some areas consist of towering mountain ranges as well. This particular rugged and towering mountain range ends at the crater Eratosthenes... Just beyon...

My health has been rather lousy lately so today is another "down day" of inactivity while my health recovers.  I've been rather frustrated and anxious lately about accomplishing nothing around the house to the point that my doctors are a bit concerned because they feel that I am having some heart issues. I'm convinced it is just frustration and a bit of anxiety causing these relatively minor heart issues. Unfortunately, the more I have to sit around recovering, the more frustrated and anxious I get. There is a lot I want to do and accomplish but my health is refusing to cooperate. And, to be honest, we've been spending far too much time at the hospital and medical appointments. I'm frustrated. So, as I sit here again while my health recovers, I've decided to revisit the moon images from the other night.  I shot this series of images in two formats... a compressed jpeg format for simplicity and a RAW format for more detail. I always shoot both jpegs a...