Scattered Thoughts . . .

O ver the past week, in between bouts of lousy health, I have been working on making two homemade solar flat caps.   A flat cap comes in handy when imaging the sun.  The flat cap will diffuse the view for images that are called "flat frames".  These flat caps are placed over the front end of the telescope, temporarily, to shoot these flat frames.  The flat frames are then divided into the stack of normal image frames.   A good flat frame will allow me to create even light across the frame (solar filters create mildly uneven light across the frame).  It will also help to eliminate any dust specks on the image files.   Of course, keeping the camera's sensor clean also eliminates specks and blobs of dust but using a flat frame is another process to effectively smooth out many of these types of defects in the solar image stacks.  This little project called for scrounging up various household materials and some hobby tools.  I always have some thin styrene on hand and that def

B ack in mid-August, we had a nice evening of pitching and putting in the backyard with some of the grandchildren.  This type of thing is always a great opportunity for capturing photos of the grandkids so, naturally, I had a couple of cameras and a few lenses on hand.  While they played, I kept moving around trying to capture the best angles.   Shooting photos of kids means getting down on my knees or crouching or sitting on the ground but my knees have been painful and swollen since my first bout with COVID-19 so this little informal photo shoot was a bit painful.  Even if I sit on the ground, getting down onto the ground and getting up again is painful.  Kneeling or crouching, however, will put me back on crutches again so I always avoid those two positions.  Still, I refused to resort to shooting photos of kids while looking down on them.  Kids should always be photographed down at their level.  It was beginning to get dark as the sun set behind the trees but we still had some sun

L ukey and Kenzie accompanied us to the International Antique and Classic Boat Show on Lake Champlain in Burlington last weekend.  The weather was great although maybe a bit too hot for a September afternoon.  We walked quite a few miles as we drooled over many antique boats.   After perusing all the beautiful boats all along the waterfront, we brought the grandkids out to dinner for their first barbeque meal at a restaurant that specializes in barbeque.  Barbeque is hard to find up here in Vermont so our choice of restaurants was limited.  Sheila and I had been here once before so we knew what dishes to avoid at this particular restaurant.  We chose to order a bunch of different dishes and share them family-style.  Overall, it was a great meal and we left completely full! We then made our way back home to sit around a warm fire in the backyard and have some S'mores for dessert.  It was a long, busy but very good day! Here are a few of the many photos from our day... Trying to find