Scattered Thoughts . . .

Two weeks ago, Liza and the kids came to our house to celebrate Gee's birthday.  Yesterday, all the grandkids came to our house to celebrate birthdays for Lukey, Kenzie and Ellie. Gee started baking two dozen cupcakes first thing in the morning and by the time the kids arrived around noon Gee was about to frost the cupcakes... Kenzie is already picking out more new clothes from a catalog...   Ellie has an empty dollhouse at home so we gave her a dollhouse family of posable dolls as well as enough furniture to furnish her dollhouse... After all the gifts were opened, Lukey and I assembled his new train station.  Well, actually, Lukey did the assembling while I guided him along.  He received a Polar Express train set for Christmas so this new train station will fit in well with his Polar Express passenger train.  The Burlington F9 diesel locomotive is one of mine that we placed next to the new train station for Lukey to see the scale... After this little birthday celebration at our h

I made two solar filters relatively recently.  One was made a little over a year ago (pictured at right) and the other was made a little over two years ago (next picture, below).  I was happy with these two filters but rarely used them because I have far better types of solar filters to use.  I think my primary reason for this exercise in making these filters was simply for the experience more than any other reason although there were a couple of other reasons (which I'll address below).  But let me start this blog entry by saying that I will never again use one of these piece-of-garbage, flimsy, and consequently, dangerous Baader film solar filters! I haven't used either filter more than three or four times each in this two year period and they have been handled exceptionally carefully ( never touching the filter material) and stored in protective zip-lock bags and these bags placed inside protective boxes for storage until the next use.  Even though these two filters were

S heila's birthday was last weekend.  I've been a bit too distracted with other things to write here in the blog for the past couple of weeks so I'm just adding some photos from Sheila's birthday now.   Sheila received her birthday gifts before her birthday even arrived this year.  I bought her an updated Samsung Smart/Fitness Watch (updated two versions from her old watch) which arrived a week before her birthday.  She opened that gift when it arrived in case it needed to be returned.   I also gave her some jewelry for her birthday and she opened that a couple of evenings early while she was video chatting with Lukey and Kenzie.  I gave her the gift while the kids were chatting with her so they could see her open at least one gift.   It turns out that Liza and the kids stopped by the house for a short while on Sheila's birthday too so I shot a few photos and we had a birthday cake for Gee.   It was nice spending a little time with the kids again.  We haven't re

U sually, my health worsens while I'm awake and, more often than not, when attempting to do things.  Any activity (ie, "doing things", raises my body core temperature and that is a significant trigger for poor health) is a major trigger for me as is straying from my long list of dietary restrictions and limits.  The temperature of my environment is also a big trigger.  Being in warm environments for more than 20 minutes or so is a problem.  Anyway, my health usually worsens during my waking hours.  Sometimes, however, for whatever reason (this is the unexplained, idiopathic part of this rare illness), poor health and sometimes even dangerously poor health is triggered while I am sleeping and the middle of the night last night was one of those nights.  Since the bedroom was only about 62° through the night, I know that a warm environment was not my trigger this time.  In this case, it seems it was simply an idiopathic triggering of poor health. I was having this dream that

I 've been waiting for some new leg brackets to arrive from England so I could fix the tripod for my little Celestron CG-2 telescope mount.  One of the brackets that holds the legs in place broke about two weeks ago.  This mount is no longer available new so finding brackets was a bit of good luck!  (The new bracket can be seen in the photo at right.) I briefly contemplated just purchasing a newer and better manual mount to replace this broken one.  I had recently upgraded this little manual mount with a new saddle as well as installed ball bearings on both axes.  This upgrade project required a bit of time and effort.  I had cutting and grinding to do...  drilling and tapping to do...  and I had to find the exact right ball bearings to fit each axis.  After my upgrade, this mount was really working very well up until this little bracket broke.  Admittedly, having a newer and slightly better manual mount would be advantageous but, since I had already put so much effort into improvi

I had previously written about having problems finding the sun with my telescope while using a finder scope called the Sol Searcher.  I resorted to removing the Sol Searcher and going back to using my homemade solar finder scope instead.  My homemade solar finder scope works very well (pictured at right with the bullseye on the back end of it) but, when I'm using more than one telescope for solar astronomy, it is best to have a finder scope for each telescope.  I was hoping this little, lightweight Sol Searcher finder scope would be the ideal solution but I was quite disappointed until the other day.   When viewing the sun, your body is situated at the rear end of the telescope where the eyepiece is located.  You would naturally want to also view the solar finder scope from this position as well and that is what I was doing.  The problem is that when you are back behind the Sol Searcher finder scope, you cannot see where the sun is on the Sol Searcher until you are dead center pos

M y newest solar filter requires a power supply.  It came with a cable and an AC adapter but, until I have built my observatory (hopefully this spring/summer), it is far easier to use a portable power supply.  Besides, the sun is behind trees all winter from where the observatory will be located so, depending on the time of day, I need to set up the telescope in a different location and I sometimes need to move the telescope as the sun moves behind more trees.  Portable power is an easier solution for this. The manufacturer offers a solar powered battery to use for this but the price seemed a bit high.  This filter is a bit of a power hog so it does need to be a relatively powerful battery.  That solar powered battery idea seemed like a great idea for powering a solar filter though.  This prompted me to look around online to see if I can find a more reasonably priced solar battery with the same specifications or better.   In the meantime, we have a portable charger that we use for char

Y esterday afternoon was a little chilly but a beautiful afternoon for solar astronomy.  The sky was a deep blue, the distant mountaintops were crisp with no haze diminishing my view, and the temperature was a balmy 20° or so.  It was a great opportunity to spend a little more time with this new solar filter. I set up everything indoors and then moved everything to our mudroom/laundry room at the back door to make it easier moving everything outdoors.  I knew I wanted to attempt to capture some photos so I also had two cameras ready as well as a few lens choices.   You can clearly see in this first photo that it was a beautiful afternoon.  I don't think I've seen skies this clear in years! I was able to set up the telescope in an area where I had cleared snow the previous night.  This area of the backyard is very near our outdoor kitchen and the back door to the house so I had easy access to any additional equipment I might need from indoors.   Although it was a relatively mode

I was evaluating a new solar filter on two separate mornings over the past week.  The views weren't as good as they could be.  These views were brighter than necessary and my research was indicating that reducing the aperture of the telescope might produce better results.  In particular, I was hoping to find a way to see more detail on the surface of the sun's chromosphere.  I always have some scrap lumber lying around so I went looking for a small scrap of 1/4" plywood.  I could cut a hole of the correct size and then cut out the outside diameter.  This would then fit inside the dew shield on my telescope.  The inside hole would provide the new, smaller aperture for the telescope. In this case, my intention was to cut a 60mm hole.  Unfortunately, the drill bit walked a bit when cutting so I screwed up the hole slightly.  Fortunately, I managed to salvage the project by making the hole a 63mm diameter hole instead.  This would change my f5.8 telescope to an f6.67 telescop

W hen I brought my telescope and mount outside the other day to do some solar observing, a leg bracket broke on my tripod as I was opening up the tripod legs.  This bracket holds the leg in place when it is in use and the tripod is useless with a broken bracket.  My day wasn't starting out too well. I wanted to use this particular telescope mount because it has slow motion control knobs.  These slow motion controls make it easier to keep the sun in the center of my view.  As I slowly turn one knob, the sun stays in the center of my view.  Now I had to move the telescope over to another small mount.  I went back to my new-ish Alt-Az manual mount.  I really wanted to use those slow motion controls for this session though so this was a bit of a letdown.  Having another thing break and added to my to-do list was an even bigger letdown.   As you can see in the photo, the tabs that hold the spreader bar snapped off.  I had fairly recently rebuilt this mount with ball bearings and a bette