Scattered Thoughts . . .

We've had a few new regular visitors to our backyard lately but this morning was the first time I had any luck in capturing a photo of these new visitors.   We have a couple of rabbits who now visit regularly but I haven't been able to get any photos of them.  We also have a large pileated woodpecker who visits the yard daily but he has been very skittish whenever I have tried to get close with my camera.   Our other regular visitor is a ground hog and I managed to capture a photo of him this morning through one of our windows.  I tried to step outdoors to get the photo but he was about to run off due to the tiny bit of noise I made with the door so I opted to shoot through a closed window and window screen.  This made for a rather blurry image but the image is still decent.   When I first noticed him in the yard this morning as I was walking past our living room window, I thought he was one of the neighborhood cats.  When I went to the back door to step outside, I realized thi

T he other day, I went out to the shed in the rain to cut out a couple of aperture masks for my small 50mm guide scope.  I want to try to use this guide scope as an imaging scope for imaging the full disk of the sun.  I have previously worked out a potential configuration to do the same using my 72mm ED refractor but I want to compare the two and then continue to use the one that produces the best images.   I need these aperture masks because I need the guide scope's focal ratio to be in the f5 to f6.5 range.  Without these aperture masks, my guide scope is at f3.2 which is too fast for this particular use.  I'm using my Quark Chromosphere solar filter so I need the focal ratio to be between f4 and f8.  I'm thinking that closer to f4 might be better for capturing prominences while closer to f8 will be better for capturing details on the 'surface' of the chromosphere.  This surface isn't really a hard surface though...  it is a surface of plasma gas in the form o

I built a dolly for my sailboat about ten years ago or so.  This dolly resembles a boat trailer but, rather than being made out of galvanized steel and being roadworthy, it is simply made out of wood and meant only as a safe way to move the boat around the backyard as well as a place to keep the boat in the backyard.  This dolly was well worth the time and effort in building it. Over the years, one of the axles has bent causing the wheel to bind against the frame of the dolly.  This binding definitely defeats the purpose of the dolly.  The dolly was meant to provide a very easy way of moving the boat around when necessary and that has become quite difficult with one of the wheels binding. Truth be told, this is another one of those small projects that I have had on my to-do list for a couple of years but I kept putting it off.  Well, I tackled this project yesterday and now I can move the sailboat anywhere in the yard with ease.   In the coming weeks, I hope to clean the boat and wax

Whenever I'm observing the night sky (as opposed to imaging the night sky), I use a diagonal placed into my focuser.  The diagonal reflects the light that is streaming through the telescope to a 90° angle making it easier to view through the telescope.  Some diagonals are at 45° but those are mostly used for terrestrial observing where the telescope is mostly horizontal or level.  The eyepiece is placed into the diagonal and, due to the diagonal reflecting the light  90°, the top of the eyepiece  is now pointing upward making it easier to look down into the eyepiece.  This is the purpose of the diagonal...  to direct the light to the eyepiece at a position that is easier for viewing. If you had no diagonal to change the direction of the light, you would need to crane your neck to view straight through the telescope.  Sometimes you would even need to be sitting or lying on the ground to view the sky through the telescope if not using a diagonal.  A diagonal makes it easier to view

This past Saturday morning, Kenzie and Gee ran a 5K run together.  This was their second year running in this particular event and it was obvious that they enjoyed themselves again this year!  I enjoyed being there too! I had heard on the news that 1200 people ran in this year's Girls on the Run 5K event.  Just like last year, Kenzie and Gee were in the first of four groups for the staggered start.  They were near the front of the pack at the start as well as at the finish.   We arrived at the fairgrounds at 7:30 in the morning as the gates opened.  This allowed us to get a front row parking spot as well as allowed us to beat the traffic getting into the fairgrounds.  It also allowed Kenzie and Gee to get prepared and focused for their run.   As you can see in the photo, below, Kenzie was wound up and ready to go when we arrived...  she got some good air for this photo... Below, Kenzie's coach is pinning Kenzie's name and number onto her shirt... A shot of the crowd... Belo

T he other night, Sheila and I had no energy to cook a full meal nor were we all that hungry for a typical dinner so we just made some hot buttered pretzels fresh out of the oven with a homemade beer cheese dip that I threw together.  That definitely hit the spot!   I took some notes on how I made the beer cheese dip and then, after eating the pretzels and the dip, I adjusted the recipe and ingredients so it will be even better next time.   We'll definitely be making this again!

Liza and the kids spent some time at the house after Kenzie's and Gee's 5K run the other day.  They had a little time to kill before Lukey's baseball game later in the afternoon.  While we killed time, we set up the newly finished homemade Giant Jenga game in the backyard so the kids could play a couple of quick games. The weather was chilly, windy and it looked like it would rain at any moment.  We could definitely use the rain but we didn't get any.  It actually feels like September and the lawn looks like a typical dry September lawn.  We really could use rain...  a lot of rain at this point.  We were able to squeeze in a couple of quick games before Liza and the kids had to run to Lukey's baseball game.   Lukey played against Gee in the first game.  Kenzie had the winner in the second game.  Unfortunately, Ace wouldn't allow Kenzie to play so the game was cut short when Ace knocked the tower of blocks over.   Gee and Lukey played a very good game though!  Th

O ur homemade Giant Jenga game is now ready for playing in our backyard! After I finished sanding all the 2x4 pieces with 220 grit sandpaper (which was after 80 grit and 120 grit), I waxed every piece and then polished the wax until it was smooth and slick.  I also waxed the top of the leveling base.  Now every piece is very smooth and looks nothing like a typical framing 2x4 which is how this wood started!  Each of these pieces started very rough when I first cut the 2x4s to length.  Now they are looking nothing like a typical framing 2x4. For some reason, I thought that the relatively easy process of applying wax and then polishing it would go very quickly but, as usual as my health worsens and I get older, I was very wrong in my time estimate.   I think the waxing required even more of my time than sanding with the last grit of sandpaper did and that took far longer than I anticipated!   I found that I could only wax and polish 12 of the pieces in an hour.  There are 54 pieces so th

I had written previously about finally finding a configuration of gear that makes full disk solar observing far more enjoyable than without this new configuration of solar gear.  The purpose of this blog entry is more about documenting this new and unusual configuration so I can duplicate it again each time I want to observe the full disk of the sun with my Quark solar filter.  Of course, I have this configuration documented in my notes too but I figured it would be good to document it here as well.   My larger telescopes provide more closeup views but I like to see the whole disk as well.  In order to improve my full disk view, I had to play around with a few ideas on how I could possibly accomplish this.  I kept going back to my assortment of astronomy components to assemble different configurations.  Then I had to play around with spacing.  It was a fairly long process of trial and error based upon the knowledge I had gained through experience but I eventually hit upon the right co

W hen I was out testing a new solar astronomy gear configuration a few days ago, I had a problem with my focuser slipping.  This was caused by two factors...  first, this new configuration put a lot of weight on the focuser...  and second, at the time, I was viewing the sun at its highest point in the sky at noon.  This orientation made it easier for the focuser to slip downward toward the ground.   When I brought the gear back indoors, I tried to adjust some of the setscrews underneath the focuser but, honestly, I had no idea what any of the setscrews did.  You would think that you want all of them as tight as possible but that is completely wrong in this case.  I had to do some research. While in bed that night, I did some research on my Kindle.  I found a thread in an astronomy forum about adjusting this focuser.  I wanted to get out of bed right away to fix this focuser but I wisely memorized the page and then went to sleep instead.   The next evening I pulled out this little teles