Scattered Thoughts . . .

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

M y health has been improving this past week, finally, after a lot of physical therapy to build up my strength enough to walk around normally (mostly, anyway).  I'm still struggling with breathing problems due to the long-COVID thing but my long-COVID inflammation seems to finally be improving.  Since I had some strength and the sun was out, I thought it would be a good day to head outside with some astronomy gear.   The sun was penetrating through a lot of haze and high thin clouds today which is better than overcast skies so I decided I should take advantage of this unusually nice weather.  I could use all the practice I can get in preparation of the eclipse.  Unfortunately, I definitely overdid it today so I'm back to having difficulty walking and even standing.  This isn't great weather for solar observing nor imaging but I needed to take advantage of the fair weather with no threats of precipitation. I was thinking that I'd just take a couple of telescopes outside

I 've made a couple of homemade solar finder scopes in the past and have written about them here in this blog.  I made two additional solar finder scopes over the past few days out of unused parts for two reasons...  first, I could always use an extra solar finder scope for a second or third telescope, and second, we have an upcoming solar eclipse and I plan to have a few telescopes set up for viewing that day.   The upcoming solar eclipse has prompted me to jump on this little project just in case the weather is good enough for us to view the eclipse (which still does not look promising).  I plan to have a few telescopes in the backyard so that a few people can view at the same time and there really should be a finder scope on each telescope to make pointing the telescope at the sun much easier.  You'd think it would be easy pointing a telescope at the bright sun but the sun is so blindly bright that this usually becomes an exercise in frustration.  I've had two small 30mm

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

I 'm feeling well enough this weekend (not to be confused with feeling well...  I was just feeling well enough) to cook a larger than average meal today so we're having corned beef and cabbage today, St Patrick's Day. I put the corned beef in the oven about an hour ago and it will be in the oven almost all afternoon.  The house is already smelling delicious! Most recipes call for simmering corned beef on the stove but I'm not much a fan of boiled meats.  Back awhile ago, I tried a Dutch oven...  that was better than boiling but it still was lacking.  Besides, neither one of us likes cleaning the Dutch oven either! Then I decided to slow cook the corned beef in the oven, covered, with spices and fresh onions and garlic.  I add a bit of liquid to this too (beef stock, watered down to cut the salt a bit) and then seal it up in foil.  It slow cooks for at least an hour per pound. This is the same way I slow cook pork so I don't know why I didn't always cook my corne

W ith the upcoming eclipse, I want to make sure we have everything we need to safely view the eclipse especially if Lukey and Kenzie are going to observe it with us.  If the weather doesn't cooperate (which is likely) then at least I'll have these items for other days of solar astronomy.  If the weather does cooperate, I definitely want to be able to view this eclipse as many ways as possible and these solar glasses will come in handy. Obviously, since I have a few telescopes, I'll have telescopes set up in the yard too.  Each telescope will have an appropriate solar filter and will be ready for viewing at any time.  However, when you are sitting back in a chair, it would be nice to have solar glasses available to watch the eclipse as well.   I just purchased these solar glasses, below, about a week ago.  They came in a box of three.  The great thing about these solar glasses is that they have sturdy frames and they fit over regular eyeglasses quite well.  These are definit

The new saddle for my new SolarQuest mount arrived this morning...  finally (USPS shipping is horrendous) ...  so I spent a little time upgrading the mount this morning.  I did a bit of work upgrading it yesterday too but I had been waiting for this new saddle to arrive for quite a while and I finally got that done this morning. In the photo, below, you can see the original saddle that came already installed on the SolarQuest mount.  I've had some bad experiences with this type of saddle...  the cast aluminum tends to crack and break eventually, the single bolt damages dovetail bars, and the single bolt isn't a secure as it should be...  so I wanted to replace it with a better one to keep my telescopes as secure as possible. In this next photo, you can see the new replacement saddle.  It is a much heavier duty saddle and it is actually a large clamp to hold the telescope rather than just a single bolt holding the telescope in place.  Replacing this saddle was easy when the new

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.

T oday is an exceptionally rare clear, sunny March day so I immediately collected some astronomy gear to bring outside.  There are a few things I want to try before the solar eclipse next month.  Really, I need all the practice I can get.  The weather has been so miserable for the past year that I haven't done any solar astronomy in almost a year! The temperature this morning was still only in the upper 30s (it is early March, after all) but I was comfortable in just a fleece sweatshirt.  Being comfortable helps.  Well...  I wasn't completely comfortable...  I'm still experiencing significant spinal pain and I'm still having difficulty putting weight on my right leg without my knee buckling underneath me.  I was more comfortable than I have been lately though so that helped. I set up the new SolarQuest mount in the backyard in the same area where we'll be observing the eclipse next month.  I could have used a small table too but I didn't feel like digging one ou

I 've been keeping an eye on the extended weather forecast since we're hoping to be able to view the solar eclipse in April.   As expected, the forecast is not looking good for any sort of astronomy around the 8th of April.  I'm not surprised in the least because this is typical for our neck of the woods at this time of year but I am a bit disappointed. Of the 30 days in April, it appears as though only three days might be suitable for astronomy...  the 13th, 15th and 16th.   The forecast is showing it will likely be -Clear- on these days but just because the skies are clear doesn't mean the skies will be steady for astronomy.  Of course astronomy is completely dependent upon a cloudless sky...  we can't magically see through clouds but astronomy is also severely affected by air currents and convection currents as well as clouds that are not in the visible spectrum.  Clouds in the infrared spectrum can also negatively impact the quality of the skies for astronomy. 

I never did finish writing about our Christmas trip to Manhattan so I should try to get back to that now since I am feeling well enough to write at the moment.   I came home from Manhattan with COVID and have been struggling with this virus and complications since then.  (We are now a week into March!)   As if that hasn't been enough to knock me down, I'm also now dealing with a significant re-injury to my extensive spinal injuries which may or may not be related to long-COVID inflammation.  I've had problems with COVID inflammation in other bouts of COVID so I'm leaning toward this spinal problem being triggered by the same.   So, for more than two months, I have been mostly couch-bound.  Needless to say, I never did finish writing about our trip to Manhattan with Lukey and Kenzie.  I'll get back to that now. Our pre-Christmas trip to Manhattan was so long ago at this point that I've forgotten about many of the details of this trip.  Maybe some of the details

F or the past few years, I've been going back and forth on whether to purchase a little mount and tripod that can automatically track the sun.  This upcoming solar eclipse nudged me to go ahead and purchase this little piece of gear of convenience.  The solar eclipse happens very quickly so any automated gear will help.  I want to get as many exceptional photos as possible during this very short couple of minutes and this will likely be my last total solar eclipse of my lifetime. This mount with its lightweight tripod is quite small and lightweight which is nice.  Another nice feature is that it is relatively inexpensive for an automatic tracking mount.   This particular mount is made by Skywatcher and is called the SolarQuest.  After leveling this mount, you simply turn it on.  It will automatically connect to satellites to attain the necessary GPS data and then it will slew to the sun automatically and begin tracking the sun.  You can't get easier than that! This nice little