Scattered Thoughts . . .

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 ...

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....

W hen I was out testing a new solar astronomy gear configuration a few days ago, I had a problem with my focuser slipping.  This was caused by two factors...  first, this new configuration put a lot of weight on the focuser...  and second, at the time, I was viewing the sun at its highest point in the sky at noon.  This orientation made it easier for the focuser to slip downward toward the ground.   When I brought the gear back indoors, I tried to adjust some of the setscrews underneath the focuser but, honestly, I had no idea what any of the setscrews did.  You would think that you want all of them as tight as possible but that is completely wrong in this case.  I had to do some research. While in bed that night, I did some research on my Kindle.  I found a thread in an astronomy forum about adjusting this focuser.  I wanted to get out of bed right away to fix this focuser but I wisely memorized the page and then went to sleep instead....

W hen I was doing some solar observing last week, I was having some problems keeping my single eye focused and open while also keeping my other eye closed.  After about five or ten minutes of observing with one eye, my eyes were twitching and they simply were not cooperating anymore.  I am definitely getting old!   These types of eye difficulties are often related to typical weakness due to old age but it is also partially related to my primary illness.  If I am beginning to have difficulty seeing through my telescopes as I did the other day, then that is a serious problem and I need to find a solution to this problem.   I felt the best solution was to get a binoviewer made specifically for telescopes so I could view the sky with both eyes instead of only one.  This is known to alleviate the typical eye strain from viewing with only one eye for longer periods of time. So, a couple of days ago, I ordered a binoviewer to be used on my telescopes an...

I really hate having to collimate any telescope which is just one reason why I prefer refractor telescopes.  I have a few refractor telescopes at different focal lengths, however, I do have one Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope that does require occasional collimation.  It doesn't require collimation nearly as often as a typical Newtonian reflector telescope but it does require it occasionally.   I have the tools and the skills to collimate any telescope but having to align mirrors just to view the sky simply grates on my nerves.  I feel like it is a waste of precious time.  I have other telescopes that are ready to go at a moment's notice but I have one telescope that requires time and effort to simply view the sky...  so, I find that having to spend time and effort collimating this scope is frustrating.  It is much easier and satisfying to just grab one of my refractor telescopes to view the sky without any other pre-requisites.  Collimation ...

I 'm still recovering from my hospital visit a week ago and I'm still feeling lousy but I am feeling just barely well enough to also be a bit bored.   This morning, I decided to pull out a small telescope, a few eyepieces and a camera to shoot a few photos through our living room window.  I needed something different to do that wouldn't wear me down completely.  I would have preferred to look at something in the sky but we very rarely see anything but clouds in the sky here between November and March so I'm stuck viewing terrestial objects rather than astronomical objects.  _________________________________________________________________ First, an update on my health...  On the positive side, I am feeling slightly better with each passing day since starting on the steroid therapy so that is good.  I am still feeling lousy though.  I'm still seesawing toward anaphylaxis with breathing difficulties occasionally and then recovering an hour or so lat...

I am still feeling rather lousy and lacking energy so I didn't think it would be wise to do much today.  My plan was to lay low and recover.  I want this virus behind me...  once again!  (Perhaps the third time is the charm.)   The lawn is in need of mowing but I have been putting that off for the past few days in an attempt to recover.  This morning was a fairly clear day outside though so I mustered up the energy to drag one of my telescopes outside to do some solar observing again for a short while.  This wouldn't require nearly as much energy as mowing the lawn or any other project that needs to be done so solar observing was the thing to do this morning. This time I grabbed my longest telescope so I could do some closeup observing. I haven't used this telescope in a while.  This telescope is fairly long at 1000mm.  When we combine that with the internal Barlow lens of the Quark Chromosphere hydrogen alpha solar filter I was using, ...

M y slow motion control knobs arrived this morning.  I quickly pulled the gears off each axis of my old mount and installed these new knobs in place of the gears.  I had been, very briefly, using the old gears as slow motion control knobs until these new knobs arrived.  These new knobs make it very easy to slowly track astronomical objects manually as the objects slowly drift across the sky.  Well...  really, the Earth is rotating and the astronomical objects are stationary by comparison but they appear to drift across the sky in an arcing pattern.   The upper photo shows the Declination axis while the lower photo shows the Right Ascension axis.  These knobs are just the right size for easy fingertip control of slow tracking.   Here, below, is a photo of the Declination axis gear that I removed this morning.  The gear shaft is a standard 1/4" shaft so finding nice knobs to the replace the gears was very easy.  For a short while...

A s I mentioned in a previous blog entry, last Saturday was my last day of imaging with what was, at the time, my best telescope mount (see photo, at right).  At the time, it seemed like the electronics were toast so that put an end to this last imaging session within a short few minutes.  Then I spent the next few hours trying to figure out exactly what was wrong with this mount. Even after a few days, I still had not fixed the mount because I still had no idea what could be wrong other than perhaps a piece of obsolete and no-longer-available electronics failed so I ordered a new mount.  The mount I ordered was the newer and significantly improved version of this older mount.  The advantage of purchasing the same (but improved) mount is that I wouldn't need to purchase any other associated accessories because this new mount would fit everything I already own.  It would fit every tripod, it would fit my telescope pier with no adapting necessary, and all my assoc...

Y esterday afternoon was a little chilly but a beautiful afternoon for solar astronomy.  The sky was a deep blue, the distant mountaintops were crisp with no haze diminishing my view, and the temperature was a balmy 20° or so.  It was a great opportunity to spend a little more time with this new solar filter. I set up everything indoors and then moved everything to our mudroom/laundry room at the back door to make it easier moving everything outdoors.  I knew I wanted to attempt to capture some photos so I also had two cameras ready as well as a few lens choices.   You can clearly see in this first photo that it was a beautiful afternoon.  I don't think I've seen skies this clear in years! I was able to set up the telescope in an area where I had cleared snow the previous night.  This area of the backyard is very near our outdoor kitchen and the back door to the house so I had easy access to any additional equipment I might need from indoors. ...