Scattered Thoughts . . .

My health is still recovering from the problems I had Saturday but I felt like dragging a telescope out to the front deck to observe the sun this morning. It doesn't require a whole lot of energy to peer through a telescope but I do need to be careful out in the sun or I'll end up with failing health again. I definitely don't have the energy nor is my head clear enough to attempt any home improvement/repair projects so I will probably bounce between the piano and the telescope all morning. It is a bit hazy again today so the viewing isn't great but it is better than the clouds and rain we've had for the past week or longer. At least the sun is shining! Up until today, all my astrophotography has been done using my Sony a6000 with its 1.5x crop sensor. This morning, however, I decided to give my full frame Sony a7 a shot... My Sony a7 worked just fine. This camera will give me a slightly wider view but also should provide smoother gradients and simply bette

Sheila is recovering from her hospital visit a few days ago and we're ready to jump into more medical appointments for her. On the positive side, she is slowly recovering and feeling better. We're still waiting to see her Oncologist and her Primary Care doctor early this week to discuss these newest problems but, for now, she is feeling more stable.  My health, however, is taking a serious hit. I went out to mow the lawn after breakfast yesterday morning since it was a first day in a week that we finally had dry grass. It was beginning to get warm so I opted to forego pulling out the weed-whacker and just do a relatively quick mow. I figured I needed to minimize my time out in the sun, heat and humidity so I skipped the weed-whacking. My health does not do well in the heat and Saturday was a bit warm and quite humid. I knew the wisest thing to do would be to just run the mower over the lawn as quickly as possible without overdoing it and then get out of the heat.  About

Sheila nudged me awake in the middle of the night last night...  I thought she was waking me because I was having another violent nightmare again (which, unfortunately, happens too often)... and I immediately said to myself, "...wait a second... I wasn't having a nightmare."   I was thinking, "This must be serious..." All she said was, "I need you to... " and I jumped up out of bed to see what was wrong.   She was about to vomit... she couldn't move... she couldn't focus her eyes as they darted violently back and forth... she wanted me to get a bucket. I ran for the bucket and a plastic bag while all sorts of first aid techniques were running through my head... and, as I wondered why this was happening.  She kept saying, "I can't move... I can't move... I think I'm going to be sick..." and she looked terrible. She was stiff yet she seemed to be only as flat as the contour of the bed and pillow as though she were

Every year we expand and improve our landscaping and gardens and this Spring was no exception. Each year, things are a little bit different in our yard with different plants and slightly different gardens and we seem to add a little more each year as well.   I'm not at all into having little figures and figurines in our gardens and backyard, in general,  but we do have our frog, Dawn, perched on our front step to greet all visitors. This frog is named after Sheila's lifelong friend, Dawn. If you were fortunate enough to know Dawn, you'll understand why our frog is named Dawn... We added cedar planters and window boxes this year and hope to add more to more windows in the future... As always, our stone walls, stone paving, and timbers tend to expand and artistically spread as well. This stone walkway to our backyard and back door , lined by wildflowers and stones,  is one of my favorite features (and required a lot of back-breaking work for someone with extensive

The upgraded Celestron 70mm telescope.           I've already written a few times about rebuilding this particular little telescope but I added another part recently so it is worth writing about again.  As purchased, this scope was a hunk of junk. Celestron should be embarrassed by all their sub-$400 telescope packages because they are all worthless as sold. I suspect a lot of people end up getting turned off to astronomy as a result of being disappointed by purchasing a lousy, frustrating telescope. Only the very determined will continue this hobby after becoming frustrated beyond belief. I bought a Celestron 114EQ for our son a number of years ago. We quickly realized that this particular scope was not ideal for a beginner and we never got any decent views out of it so, the next Christmas, I purchased a simpler Celestron 70AZ. This telescope wasn't much better than the 114EQ but I felt it had potential for various reasons not worth explaining here.  This telescope

I'm laying low for a while since I'm fighting off a cold. The cold isn't so terrible (yet) but my mast cells are angry causing some serious problems related to my primary illness. While I'm recovering, I am taking advantage of the quiet time to catch up on some blog entries.  One thing I have been meaning to write about is a wooden telescope case I designed and built. I have this nice, new, high-quality telescope but I had no way to store it. I feel a telescope of this quality deserves a nice case. Actually, I'd like to do this with all of my optics and I do have plans to do this very thing... I just need to find the time and energy!  I just finished the first homemade case which is for storing my better telescope and I have another wood case almost finished which is to store the tracking mount for this telescope. I also want to build a few other cases for other astronomy gear. This is something I should have started doing many years ago with my camera gear and

Last night, I quickly assembled my good telescope on the deck so Sheila and I could get some quick views of the moon and Jupiter. Sheila hasn't had an opportunity to view anything at all through my good and bigger telescope until now so last night was a first for her. Her only reference to a quality telescope was her few views through the little cheap telescope I rebuilt in recent weeks.  First, we checked out the moon... we started by observing the entire moon in the field of view... this elicited the first of many WOW's  from Sheila. Compared to the views she has seen before through the small rebuilt telescope, this better telescope provides stunningly crisp and bright views. The views of the moon are so bright, in fact, that we need to use a filter to cut the light down to only 13%. Then we moved to more powerful combinations of eyepieces and barlows. She got to see very closeup views of various craters as well as closeup views of the Montes Apenninus mountain range and

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