We have a horse pasture that’s occupied by a horse, Rose, and donkey, Midnight. They are both pushing 40 and have been together for most of that time. They actually came with the farm; the previous owners could find homes for one or the other, but not both, and they are inseparable. Well they are … Read more
We’ve had an inch-and-a-half of rain over the last 2 days, and when I got up at 4:30 to check the sky, we were still socked in. Went back to bed, woke up a little after 6, and I’ll be darned if the clouds hadn’t cleared out and offered a beautiful view of the earth’s … Read more
Friends have asked if I got pictures of the comet (Lovejoy C/2014 Q2) and I’ve been reluctant to admit, that, yes, I have, but that they are pretty bad pictures. The first was a wide field shot in which I imagined seeing the comet’s tail streaming gracefully among the Hyades and the Pleiades. For tracking, … Read more
One of my favorite sights is the crazy blackbird flight school offered each Spring as hundreds or thousands of birds launch into flight together, wheeling and turning in unison. We have a very healthy stand of bamboo grown from a few starts given to us 20 odd years ago by our friend Joe. That little … Read more
Since I’ve been using the Takahashi FSQ106-ED with the STL11000, I’m getting wide field images, about 3.9 x 2.7 degrees. So the fields contain numerous cataloged objects that would be nice to identify. Pixinsight offers a workflow to “solve” the image which provides accurate WCS coordinates that are added to the FITS header; and an … Read more
It’s -13 outside. I was trying to make snow; I poured boiling water in a mister and was spraying it around outside. I think the droplets were too small; what came out looked like white steam and rose quickly out of sight. Bigger droplets were definitely frozen.. Anyway it was inconclusive. I checked the WoodMaster, … Read more
We have a new addition! Baby Stardust was born last Sunday. She was born healthy around noon, and immediately started exploring the pasture. Unfortunately, she and her mother Izzie didn’t connect in the nursing department. We gave the baby a colostrum supplement, but true alpaca colostrum products are not available. Izzie’s teats were soft, and … Read more
I need to do some painting. Not the creative kind, but the Hut is showing wear, and the Scope Shed is still wearing its original brown. This occurred to me at maybe 4:30 am after getting up to pee, and before falling back to sleep. So it made sense to get the painting stuff laid … Read more
On a lovely but chilly May morning I arrived at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and saw this marvelous mountain of sand that begged to be climbed. I was glad it was chilly because the Dune Climb is steep, and, well, sand is a bitch to walk thru. Once at the top, there is a … Read more
We had a really clear night June 3rd, following a cold front, so I set up an imaging run on M64, the descriptively named “Black Eye” galaxy. I got a good hour of luminance data, but only about 15 minutes each of RGB. I haven’t made anything acceptable with the color data yet, but the … Read more