In the Wee Hours...

I awoke this morning and realised that I needed to move my car, since we have graciously "donated" our driveway to my squad for parking while they hold the Community Garage Sale. I was supposed to be in it, but pulled out last week. I don't think my back can handle that.

The first thing that struck me was the sight of Venus in the still dark sky. (It is now getting light enough in the east that Mars and Regulus are no longer visible.) I moved my car, then took out the binoculars to get a better look at things. Venus looks more like a planet through the binoculars, as does Mars - they look like discs. But I want pictures. I stopped in the house, swapped my binoculars for my camera and attempted, yet again, to take more photos of Venus and a couple of Mars.

The western setting moon is easy. I'm well aware of what I need to do to manipulate the camera to give me good moon shots. Venus is brilliant but small and I can still do it, but it is harder. Mars was damn near impossible. I need to bring my telescope to my parents' house so that Ray can help me put it together again.

It's not apart, per se, but I had loosened up too many things and it won't stay on the stand and I can't seem to train it on anything. That ruined the last eclipse completely and I really want to see the conjunction of the Moon, Saturn, Venus and Regulus Sunday morning. I do not want to miss this.
Ray is really good with fixing things, so I think he can do this. And once I can train my beautiful telescope on things, then I know I can take really great photos of the stars and planets. I've done it before.
Still, here is what I did get.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Interesting Aftermath a From Season Five of "MasterChef"

Image
Do I agree with this? You will have to read it first and decide for yourself. I had long since made up my mind before finding this article. MasterChef Season 5 Fixed: Courtney Lapresi Won Finale After Getting Preferential Treatment – Former Stripper Favoritism BY  STORMY ELIZABETH  ON SEPTEMBER 23, 2014 "They say if you can’t take the heat, you should get out of the kitchen, but what if you like it hot? If you’ve been watching  MasterChef this season 5 , you may have noticed that one contestant in particular seems to  be “winning” challenges  when her dishes don’t seem to be quite up to it.  Courtney Lapresi  has been billed as an “aerial dancer” on the show. So what exactly is that, you ask? It’s a fancy word for stripper. You may term what she does as burlesque, but nekked is nekked and she takes off her  clothes  when she dances, so you have to call them as you see them. Plus is it really fair that she’s up for a MasterChef win aft
Read more

A.W.A.D. - 14-Letter Words, 14-Letter Definitions

Back in 1994, when I founded Wordsmith.org on a Pi Day (March 14), I had no idea that one day we'd be celebrating its quadridecennial. Here's what the last 14 years look in numbers: So far we have sent out 3,782 unique words and 297 AWADmail compilations to 640,000 present subscribers in 200 countries, that is more than 1.6 billion pieces of email. Well, this week we're seeing all things 14. We'll feature words that are 14 letters long, and define each of them in 14 letters. acritochromacy (uh-KRIT-o-kro-muh-see) noun Color blindness. [From Greek akritos (undistinguishing) + chroma (color).] tintinnabulate (tin-ti-NAB-yuh-layt) verb intr. To ring; to tinkle. [From Latin tintinnabulum (bell), from tintinnare (to jingle).] tinctumutation (tinkt-myoo-TAY-shuhn) noun Change of colour. [From Latin tinctus (a dyeing) + mutation (changing).] Brobdingnagian (brob-ding-NAG-ee-uhn) adjective Of gigantic size. [After Brobdingnag, the fictional region where everything was enormous
Read more

An Interesting Wife Swap...

Image
I'm catching up on our Wife Swap recordings. I'm watching the epiode Burroughs/Padovan-Hickman one that aired on 17 April 2009. The one I watched just before was really quite satisfying - the families both learned a lot and seemed to really take it to heart. This one, however, is back to the familiar mold of putting families that are so totally diametrically opposite families together that they almost can't get along. This is interesting, though, because the Padovan-Hickmans have electricity but don't use it, don't flush often, go for a week without showering and then the whole family uses the same bathwater... I can see where that would be hard, especially for me in that I have very oily skin and hair and would look rather wretched after the next day. But the family themselves are very likable and fun, the father looks more like a kindly grandfather, but really is quite intelligent and pleasant. I would have trouble with the clean thing and I'd miss my iPod
Read more