Scattered Thoughts . . .

The eyepieces I had ordered last week for our little cheap telescope for the kids to use arrived yesterday afternoon... finally! These are relatively low-cost eyepieces but far better than the cheap, useless Celestron eyepieces that came with this telescope.  Since the moon was still in the sky this morning (again), I tested these new eyepieces by viewing the moon. These eyepieces looked great and are a tremendous step up from the original Celestron eyepieces so this was a good, low cost solution. They are not as good as my larger Baader Hyperion eyepieces but they are just fine for this cheap little telescope. The view of the moon this morning was quite nice. The three smaller eyepieces to the right, below... Orion Expanse eyepieces... are the eyepieces to be used with this small scope. The larger Baader Hyperion eyepieces to the left are for my better telescope and are quite good! I'm now looking forward to some clear night skies!

I had another medical appointment yesterday for my own health issues... some bloodwork... some shots... some discussions and advice... and now being referred to some of my usual specialists and one new specialist. When I got back home from my appointment, I was looking over my notes and a little bit of paperwork they sent home with me... I have to say that it is a bit disconcerting to come home from a medical appointment with paperwork spread across your coffee table and one of the documents is for an "Advanced Directive for Health Care". That being said, I have a feeling that quite a few patients are being sent home with this paperwork today. I hope so, anyway. Then again, my health is rather poor and it is in appointments such as this when just how poor my health truly is becomes a bit more obvious.  I left this long appointment with three more appointments. My experience with scheduling specialist appointments is that these appointments won't be behind me until we

The past two mornings, we have had clear skies and the moon has been in the sky until late in the morning. This has allowed me to test the little telescope that I recently finished rebuilding with better parts.  I had to make some adjustments to the tripod mount after yesterday morning's quick test because the mount was a bit gummed up. I disassembled it, cleaned it up, re-lubed it, and reassembled it. This morning, I was excited to head back outside to test this little cheap telescope again. The primary advantage of this little telescope is that it is lightweight. My better telescope (which is far superior) needs to come outside in three parts... the tripod legs, the actual mount, and the telescope . Since this old cheap telescope (a Celestron 70az... converted to a 70eq) is so small and lightweight, I was able to set it up in a matter of minutes with minimal effort. The disadvantage of this little telescope is that it has a small aperture (diameter of the telescope) and the

When I looked outside this morning, it was sunny and clear. That's a rarity around these parts! I also noticed that the moon was still in the sky. It was getting close to the horizon and setting fast but, if I was quick about it, I could pull the small telescope outside and do a quick test by observing the moon.  I quickly set the little telescope on our stone walkway and pointed it toward the moon... I turned the focusing knobs... the moon came into crisp focus! So that means that all the upgrading and rebuilding I did in recent weeks produced a far better telescope. This was good news. As I mentioned above, the moon was setting quickly so I was attempting to use my slow motion knobs to constantly adjust the mount to keep the telescope pointed at the moon... it would track slightly and then when I let go it would spring back toward where I started from when I first started turning these knobs. This would happen over and over until the moon was too low in the sky.  My first

I've mentioned in a previous blog entry that I've been working on getting some telescopes ready for nighttime viewing in the warmer weather. The grandkids are getting old enough to enjoy viewing the night sky so this gave me a good reason to play with some telescopes. I have a background in aerospace so this has always been an interest of mine but it is always nice to have another reason like grandkids. It makes it easier to justify the hobby. Naturally, it seems it has done nothing but rain (and snow) for all but one day since I assembled these telescopes in our living room a few weeks ago but this has given me time to decide what to do with one or two scopes that have been terribly frustrating to use. One of these telescopes in question was a Celestron   AstroMaster  114EQ reflector telescope. This telescope has been nothing but frustration since we bought it quite a few years ago. Nothing looked even halfway decent through this scope. I've collimated it (aligned the

We've been missing a lot of time with Lukey and Kenzie over the past nine months. Sheila's cancer and cancer treatment really halted our life to a standstill quickly followed by a few other tragic events including the past three weeks in the hospital with our newest grandchild, Ellie. We'll be back at the hospital to spend some time with Ellie, Whitney and Wayne tomorrow but, today, we spent some time with Lukey and Kenzie. Lukey was in desperate need of a haircut so that was first on our schedule today. Then we jumped right into some waffles for breakfast... Kenzie and Gee spent some time doing some online clothes shopping. For the most part, their faces showed their mutual agreement in what they were seeing online... We watched a movie during breakfast and then the kids got to play with some toys they even forgot that they have here at Gee and Papa's house! We also watched some air races for a little while... some astronomy videos... and, of cours

We have two little inexpensive telescopes here at the house that I would classify as cheap garbage. When I bought each of them, I thought they would be "decent" but they were far from decent and well below my own level of "acceptable".  Neither of those telescopes are capable of relatively sharp viewing which has been a source of significant frustration. Even the little telescope that I had as a child produced far better images of the moon whenever I pulled the telescope out to view with my neighbors. I've gotten to the point where I want to just throw these two little telescopes on a bonfire and be done with the frustration. This sentiment has led me to a decision that it was time to shed my life of more unnecessary frustration including these two telescopes. If you follow this blog, you know that the past nine months have been nothing but stress and frustration for Sheila and me in every aspect of our life except for our relationship which, amazingly, hasn

It was our second sunny day in a row today! First thing this morning, we headed up to the hospital to see our warrior princess and her parents in their new PICU room overlooking Lake Champlain and the Adirondack Mountains. We picked up some coffee and breakfast for ourselves as well as for Whitney and Wayne and continued on to the hospital.  We were fortunate this morning to have arrived early enough to meet with the team of doctors. Although Ellie had a nice burst of energy and consciousness yesterday and seemed to have a great day (albeit with some visible pain)... which was perhaps the most "normal" day for her since being in the PICU... she had a rough and rather dangerous night through the night. Naturally, the doctors addressed this while also showing concern about her continuing struggles and evolving problems. Ironically, Ellie was awake during this doctor visit and seemed to be listening intently as the doctors talked and carefully examined little Ellie.  Ellie r

When we awoke this morning, the sky was a crystal clear blue and the sun was shining brightly! We hadn't seen this in weeks! The day was off to a good start for a change.  We immediately headed toward the hospital again to visit with Whitney, Wayne, and Ellie, our little warrior princess.  When we arrived at the quiet, empty hospital it was early Saturday morning so the hospital was eerily quiet. We made our way to the PICU which is in the opposite corner of the hospital from the main entrance.  As we approached Ellie's room, we could see the door was open with no commotion in the area around her room... a good sign...  We stepped into the room and it was relatively quiet other than the warning tones and beeps indicating relatively minor issues... the tones and beeps cutting through the silence. Mom was sitting on her bed in the corner of the room, dad was still sleeping, and Ellie seemed to be resting quietly but breathing deeply... The nurses are in the room 24

A week or so ago, I had written about having problems with our old home theater receiver. We had upgraded our television to 4K HDR but we found that our home theater receiver would not pass through a 4K signal. There were some other little quirks with that older receiver so I opted to purchase a new Sony Surround Sound Bar system.  I've been using this new Sony system for a few days now so I figured I would write a little about it now.  The first thing I noticed about this new sound system is it is very simplified compared to the controls of the old home theater receiver. This is good and bad. I'm not going to get into any detail here but being simplified is very much a positive and this part of it was very welcomed. That old home theater receiver made it difficult to tweak the sound because the controls were in the form of menus inside of menus inside of menus with no graphical interface. The sound quality of this new sound system is quite good. Most noticeably is that