Scattered Thoughts . . .

We'd had enough of Sheila's piece of shi... uhhh, junk... Hyundai Sonata and Sheila has been feverishly hunting for a Honda Accord for the past month or so. About two years ago, Sheila decided she wanted her next car to be a Honda Accord but has been paying off her Hyundai in the meantime. She found one a few days ago on a used car website...  we then squeezed in a test ride a day or so later... we told the dealer we liked it and we wanted it... and we picked it up the following day, yesterday. Both the bank and the dealership were very accommodating in getting everything done within hours. This Honda Accord is a significant upgrade compared to her old Hyundai Sonata. There aren't enough negative adjectives to accurately describe that old hunk of junk. What I can say in clear, concise words is we will never buy another Hyundai. This Honda rides so much more smoothly than her old car. It is far roomier inside too which Honda's are known for ever since their 1970'

While I was sitting on the couch this evening, some movement caught my eye out our living room window in the road right outside our house. As I looked more carefully out the window, I could have sworn I saw a good sized Black Bear. I wasn't completely sure it was a bear since I only saw the rear half of the bear before he disappeared in our neighbor's yard.  Since there are quite a few kids who wander around this trailer park throughout the evening and early nightfall, I wanted to make sure I was seeing things clearly so I jumped up and quickly headed outside. Within a few feet of the house, I stopped in my tracks as a rather  big Black Bear was slowly sauntering toward me. He also stopped, looked up at me, and then turned into our neighbor's yard across the street. It was clear he wanted to avoid human contact and that is a good thing but I still had some concerns about a bear wandering through the streets in our little neighborhood. We continued to watch for the bear

We've been trying to squeeze in more things with Lukey and Kenzie lately by spending a little less time at the hospital. One of the things we've been doing is going to Lukey's Tee Ball games... it is obvious in these photos that Lukey enjoys himself when playing Tee Ball by all the smiles and animated expressions... Lukey, picking up a grounder to make the play at first base, as his dad looks on... The harder Lukey tries to run faster, the farther his tongue sticks out... you should see that thing flap in the breeze when he really gets going! A race for home plate as the third baseman tries pick up the short grounder... ...Lukey made it to home plate... "Hey Papa... my water tasted a little... hic... funny..."  I don't have a clue what he was doing here...  perhaps he was bored and just playing for the camera...  clown...  Making the catch at first base... Not the best video clips (I&

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

I spent a very short while observing Jupiter and four of its moons tonight. I had intended to stay up late to do some serious observing with my good telescope as well as do some astrophotography. Unfortunately, I was completely exhausted before dinnertime (and that was after a three hour nap) so I decided to make it a very short night and only view through our little telescope.  The small telescope is far easier to set up... it is far lighter... and, since I can't really do any astrophotography with this small scope, it is far less complicated with far fewer parts. I was able to fill my pockets with a few eyepieces and just grab the telescope already on its mount and head out to the backyard. It is very much a grab-and-go telescope so it is far easier to use at the last moment. The viewing was surprisingly good tonight. I was able to easily see four of Jupiter's moons and the bands on Jupiter were clearly visible. My biggest complaint was that the focuser on this small tele

This evening, I was sorting through all the photos I shot through my new telescope the other night and came across a few series of images that might be worth processing. So, below is another photo from that "first light" observing session. Unfortunately, most of the photos I shot the other night were very underexposed so some detail and crispness has been lost due to that mistake. In this particular series of photos, the images were all grossly underexposed but I thought I might be able to salvage something out of them so I loaded the series of photos into Photoshop as a stack of layers. Just like the two other photos I shared the other night, the final image is a 96 megapixel image after processing it. I started with seven images and stacked them... adjusted levels... did some noise reduction because I had to lift the levels a bit too far after starting with gross underexposure... some selective sharpening... I removed some chromatic abberations along the top edge of the

Sony a6000 camera So, after writing about my "first light" experience last night, I realized that I haven't really written anything about this telescope or even the camera I used. Let me start by saying that both of these pieces of equipment are considered "entry-level"... the telescope is an entry-level telescope for just getting started in astrophotography... and the camera is an entry-level, all purpose mirrorless interchangeable lens camera.  Let's start with the camera since that is what actually captures the imaging. It is a Sony a6000 camera body... quite small and almost pocketable... but works great for action photos of the grandchildren as well as wildlife photography. This is also the camera I bring to the hospital because its shutter is quieter than my better camera and because it is a bit smaller than my better camera. This is an old camera by digital standards but it far surpasses entry level cameras produced today by all other manufact

It is always a memorable event when you set up a new telescope outside and peer through the eyepiece to see the first light coming through the scope... tonight was one such night for me! When we arrived back home from the hospital tonight after another visit to Miss Ellie in the PICU, I immediately started setting up my new telescope in our driveway. Well... truth be told, it is about a month old now but I hadn't had a chance to observe the night sky before tonight. Tonight would be first light through this telescope.  Setup required about eight trips in and out of the house. I need to find a way to consolidate all the little odds and ends to make this task a bit easier and faster. Then I had to set up the scope... level it... align it with Polaris... then do an additional alignment on one to three additional stars. This went fairly well but I plan to do a bit more practicing on this because my alignment was off a little bit. Plus, I couldn't figure out how to slew using th

Last night, we were invited to Lukey and Kenzie's Spring Concert. It was a short but sweet program in the always-too-hot and always-too-dark gym. It's obvious from the photos that the kids really seemed to enjoy themselves and I have to say that they put on a great show! This is always a very dark gym so I've always encountered some minor difficulties with shooting photos and last night was no exception. Last night I was encountering intermittent autofocus problems in the terrible low light so I had to resort to my skills at manual focusing. Fortunately, when I first started in photography, manual focus was the only way to focus so I do have experience with this. Unfortunately, I've been spoiled by years of autofocus so I'm a bit out of practice. Still, I managed to get some nice crisp photos.  The other difficulty I had in shooting photos last night is that Miss Mackenzie has recently been moving into a phase of shying away from Papa's camera. Even last nig