Scattered Thoughts . . .

Observing on our deck. The past few days have been sunny so I've spent these past few days observing our Sun.  Observing our Sun through a telescope is something I never thought much about doing but various conditions at night have temporarily moved me away from nighttime viewing and toward viewing the sky during the day. My images of the Sun that I have been observing have been sharp and crisp but I've been a bit perplexed about why I'm not seeing any sort of detail. I'm just seeing a bright sphere in the sky with no detail whatsoever. The edges of the sphere are crisp but I'm seeing no detail on the surface of the disk no matter which way I attempt to turn the focus knobs. There are various ways to view the Sun and each way will show only a certain band of frequencies of light. I'm delving into solar astronomy at the budget end of the spectrum so I have been observing our Sun in white light. In this wavelength, I should be able to see sunspots, gr

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 provides

I've been waiting for the past week for another good day to observe the sun so I could try my hand at solar astrophotography yet again. This morning was finally a good morning to set up my telescope on the deck so I started moving gear to the deck early this morning. While waiting for two new solar filters to arrive and for the weather to be more suitable for astronomy, I've been doing a lot of research about our sun. I actually learned quite bit... some of it even a bit frightening... but I'll save that info for another blog entry which will be written solely for that particular topic. Last week, when I tried my initial attempt at solar astrophotography, I was left feeling a bit disappointed and later found that adding two additional filters to my telescope would allow me to capture more detail. Unfortunately, I'm still waiting on one of these filters to arrive but I did have one of the filters to use this morning. So, if I could see just a little bit more detai

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 smaller sensor is it doubles the equivalent

The sun can be seen illuminating the back end of the Wedge. It has been difficult for me to get out at night lately to view the night sky with a telescope. We don't get crisp, clear nights all that often and especially in the summer. My health problems don't help in this cause either because quite often I am left too exhausted by the time we finish dinner. The real icing on the cake lately has been a roaming bear in our neighborhood at night and I really have no desire to bump into a roaming bear in the dark! Needless to say, it has been difficult to get out at night for some astronomy in recent weeks. The aforementioned nighttime viewing problems got me wondering about giving daytime solar astronomy a try. To make a long story short, I found that all I need to do to view the sun is replace one part of my telescope with a part that is designed specifically for viewing the sun... then add a filter or two... then I can view the sun with my own telescope and shoot images w

We again headed toward the airport the other day to greet Adam as he arrived from his last assignment. He is on his way to his new assignment and will be staying with us for a short while before continuing on to his new duty station.  It was a big 4th of July Parade day in all the towns surrounding Burlington so we were a little late getting to the airport which meant we didn't have time to visit the tower to watch Adam's plane arrive from up there... Nan and Pop arrived at about the same time as we did but parked at the opposite end of the parking garage... Adam arrived only a few minutes after our own arrival... Liza and the kids arrived shortly after Adam's arrival and we found them on our way to the luggage carousel... Kenzie surprised us by making a sneaky and very determined, direct beeline toward Uncle Adam and jumped up into his arms... As usual, we headed out to a nearby restaurant for a nice lunch together... Lukey w

Adam is visiting for a short while as he travels from his previous assignment to his next assignment. It has been nice catching up with him about stuff at home as well as Air Force stuff.   Last night, Adam realized that he had an award to show us and went digging through one of his bags...   Adam was recently awarded his second Air Force Achievement Medal (hence the reference to an "oak leaf cluster" on the certificate). The citation (the narrative describing his particular accomplishment for this medal) cannot be shown here because it contains classified and sensitive information but I can say that this is definitely a noteworthy achievement relating to specific Air Force operations and missions on multiple continents. Congratulations, Adam!

This morning was my turn for the hospital.   Yesterday, I had disassembled our icemaker because it was frosted-over and no longer making any ice. I defrosted all the ice/frost... and started assembling everything again... as I was pushing the icemaker upward with my thumb with as much force as I could muster to get it to clip back into place, my thumb suddenly popped loudly and bent completely backward just like a fingernail does at times...  That hurt a bit but the thought of my thumb bending completely backward at the top joint gave me the heebie-jeebies more than anything!   I continued assembling the icemaker... finished... turned it back on... and then took a closer look at my swollen thumb... I somehow got my thumb back into place but it was painful and a bit swollen. I figured I would let it go for now and see how it heals since it was not bruised yet nor was it looking like a balloon.  By last night, my whole hand was swollen so I knew I'd probably be heading for s

Lukey and Kenzie's last day of school was Friday and we were on the road to Long Island with them in tow by early Saturday morning.  We all had a great time with family and at a few different events. The kids were really looking forward to some beach time though! Actually, I think we all were looking forward to some beach time. The beach was foggy and quite deserted when we arrived in the morning. We set up our stuff right where I figured the surf would be at high tide and it turns out I was right because the lifeguards placed an "Umbrella Line" sign just in front of us when they came on duty. The kids spent the entire previous day playing with their Long Island cousins. Little did they know, Aunt Margaret had planned to surprise them by joining us at the beach too. So, they spent the entire time on Long Island socializing with people and it was obvious they enjoyed themselves. Jones Beach was beautiful, as always. The sand at this particular beach is a fine whit

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'