Scattered Thoughts . . .

M y previous two blog entries were about this same topic but with different images shot on the same day (earlier in the day during daylight) with the same equipment.  These few latest blog entries are about revisiting some older videos and images in an effort to understand a new software program meant for processing this type of imaging data.  This time around in this blog entry, I'll share the resulting images of some planets and our moon that Sheila and I observed that evening. In case you haven't yet read the couple of previous blog entries, these photos in this blog entry are from a short imaging session I had with Sheila back in November.  We observed the moon, Jupiter, Saturn and Venus.  I think we were only out there for less than a half hour but we came back into the house rather cold since it was a brisk 40 degrees or so.  That is about my limit on tolerating cold weather and, even then, I don't want to be out longer than a few minutes.  ___________________________

I had previously written about solar imaging in Calcium K (CaK).  In that imaging session, I had used one of my usual nice little refractor telescopes (Skywatcher ED 72mm refractor).  This time I am revisiting an imaging session done in white light when I used a really lousy little Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope.  This telescope is the Orion Apex 102mm Maksutov-Cassegrain (uggg...  I really hate a lot of characteristics of all reflector telescopes and this tiny little guy is no exception) .   Seriously, I do not like this little telescope at all.  I was told that a Mak-Cass would be "razor-sharp" yet this Mak-Cass does not provide a crisp image when compared to any of my refractor telescopes...  not even when compared to my sub-$100 70mm achromatic telescope.  It occasionally needs to be tediously collimated so that the mirrors are perfectly aligned otherwise the views are even significantly worse.  Collimating a Mak-Cass is tedious and difficult.  It requires a temperature

W ith the frigid temperatures outside being down in the single digits and sub-zero range everyday, I've been trying to keep busy indoors.  Of course, by saying "I've been trying to keep busy" I am referring to keeping busy in the little bit of spare time I have between health issues, daily physical therapy, daily piano practice, and down time.  Still, I like to accomplish something and learn something each day regardless of whether it is a good health day or bad health day.   The windy frigid temperatures have kept me indoors.  I don't even like going outside to get the mail in this weather so Sheila does that most days!  As I've written in this blog often, my health fares quite poorly in warmer environments (in the 80s and above) but I've been very sensitive to cold environments also as I approach 60 years old (in a few months, in case anyone wants to know).  I simply have zero tolerance for cold environments now.  (Watching the grandkids at the ice rink

T he past few nights have been frigid in the sub-zero range but the days haven't been too bad...  until today, that is...   Fortunately, we have no need to be outside today.  I think we have some significant snow headed our way tomorrow night so we'll need to be outside on Monday to move snow and rake the roof so hopefully the weather will warm up a bit into the teens or 20s by then.

T he remainder of the plumbing parts I had ordered for our new kitchen sink installation project arrived last night.  This was good news because they weren't projected to arrive until early next week.  I successfully jumped on what little still needed to be done first thing this morning.  Now the new sink is fully functional! I needed some additional plumbing parts to connect the drain of the smaller sink basin to our waste plumbing so that delayed me in finishing up this relatively easy project.   The drains of our new sink do not line up exactly the same as our old sink so that was the first difference I needed to resolve.  The other difference is that the basins of the new sink are two different depths while both basins of the old sink were at the same depth.  The large basin of our new sink is at nine inches deep while the smaller basin is only eight inches deep.  The different depths really screwed up connecting the new sink to the drain.  I thought this would be quite easy to

You'd think that after two years of a pandemic, I'd have a large collection of new paintings to show but I don't.  Much of my pandemic time was spent reading and researching as I recovered from long term virus inflammation.  I'm still having problems but I am off my crutches and cane and I am now able to do some physical therapy everyday again so that is good.   Any time that I am in a lot of pain, I find that the pain significantly affects my ability to be creative and definitely affects my ability to sit still long enough to paint.  Actually, this sort of pain really drains me of all energy very quickly but, even putting that aside, the pain is extremely distracting which makes concentration and creativity nearly impossible.  That being said, I have occasionally worked on two paintings, on and off (mostly off), during this time period though.   First, I feel the need to point out that these are just small digital files of these rather large mixed media paintings.  I n

I replaced our broken quartz kitchen sink yesterday.  Once we removed the broken sink it was very easy to see how shattered it was when we viewed it from the outside of the larger basin.  What a waste of time and money that quartz sink was for us.   One would think that any kitchen sink would be more durable to dings and bumps.  Needless to say, I will never recommend a granite or quartz kitchen sink.  I'm not even sure about granite or quartz for a bathroom sink...  what if someone dropped something fairly solid and it hit the bathroom sink?  I don't think I would take the chance.  Just avoid granite and quartz sinks altogether...  same with ceramic/terracotta and glass.  Hmmm...  I'm just thinking...  we do have ceramic bathroom sinks now and we have yet to have a problem in there so perhaps granite and quartz would be fine for a bathroom sink.   To cover it again...  back a few months ago...  maybe a year or so ago...  a heavy cast iron Dutch oven was bumped into the si

I just spent a little bit of time cleaning up the comments section of this blog.  I used to check the comments weekly so I could respond to any questions that may have been asked of me but, since the pandemic, I have really been slipping when it comes to effectively managing and updating this blog.  This morning I found that there were a bunch of spam comments peppered throughout this blog but they have been now been deleted.  I certainly welcome civil comments that are related to the content, however, if any comment includes a link to a business, to a product, to anything remotely resembling spam, it will be deleted.  If the comment is unrelated to the content of this blog or the particular blog post, it will be deleted.  If I find myself spending too much time deleting comments, I will simply turn off the comment feature on this entire blog.   UPDATE - 17 February 2022:   I am tired of seeing two blog entries about Zenni Optical in my left hand column of "Most Popular" blo

Y esterday was our family Christmas celebration.  It was delayed due to some COVID-19 quarantining but we managed to get together yesterday for a nice belated celebration.  Although the kids needed to wait a couple of weeks for their Christmas gifts, we had a house full of laughing, happy and excited grandchildren yesterday. Sheila went over to her parents' house earlier in the morning to help her mom get ready for the day then Sheila drove her mom to our house to start the day.  Sheila is showing Sue some photos of the grandchildren in this photo... We have about eight sets of eyeglasses that turn bright Christmas lights into stars, Santas, Christmas trees, snowflakes, etc.  Ellie enjoyed viewing through all of these glasses over and over throughout the day... The older grandkids are now patiently waiting (mostly) for gift-time... Liza opened Ace's gifts while he was on her lap and he seemed to like playing with each gift.  He cried whenever the previous gift was taken away so