I wrote about buying a new telescope mount in my last post. I ordered a Losmandy GM811G mount from Losmandy in Burbank, California. I wanted this mount for a number of reasons. It’s a proven, reliable design. It’s made in the USA. It’s made from machined aluminum, brass and stainless steel with a minimum of plastic parts. Replacement parts are readily available and support from Losmandy is great. And, unlike the Asian products, it’s been refined over the last 30 years. The Asian gear is obsolete after a few years as they constantly introduce new models on a regular basis.

Having to justify the expense of this equipment to myself, I did a lot of background research on the company and found some interesting stories there. When we were full-time RVers, I always enjoyed meeting people around the country and especially enjoyed success stories from self-employed people that pulled themselves up with hard work and ingenuity. Scott Losmandy falls into that category.

Scott owns and operates a machine shop called Hollywood General Machining (HGM). Under the HGM banner, he has a company called Porta-Jib. Porta-Jib caters to cinematographers and Hollywood movie production companies. Scott designed a track system that is portable and Porta-Jib builds an assortment of carriages that ride on these rails. The carriages are used to smoothly transport movie cameras through the set to film a scene. Some carriages are built to allow the director to be seated or stand while the carriage is raised to different heights so the director can survey the set or the scene being played. Some have articulating arms that can extend or retract cameras to suit the scene. The company is successful and well-known in Hollywood.

Meanwhile, Scott is also an avid amateur astronomer. He was disatisfied with the quality and cost of commercially available telescope mounts. In the late 70s or early 80s, he designed and built one for himself. It wasn’t long before members of his astronomy club wanted to know if he would build one for them. This led to a contract with the Celestron Corporation for Scott to supply them with mounts which they marketed and distributed. He formed the Losmandy Astronomical Products company under HGM. He invented a mounting plate that was sturdier and more rigid than the existing products and he made it universal to fit a large number of telescopes on the market. Today, many companies offer that design and it’s called a Losmandy dovetail plate.

In the 1990s, Scott’s new company broke away from Celestron and he began marketing and distributing the mounts himself. He also has a retail store, most of his sales are online nowadays. He is hands-on and adjusts each mount himself before shipping. Between Porta-Jib and Losmandy Astronomical, Hollywood General Machining is kept busy making parts.

The covid era caused quite a disruption in many manufacturing sectors. Hollywood shut down and movie production stopped. This meant Porta-Jib saw orders fall to almost nothing. Meanwhile, people stuck at home entered hobbies in unprecedented numbers – including astronomy. Losmandy Astronomical Products sales soared to the point of having up to a six-month backlog of orders to fill. By catering to two separate client bases, HGM was able to not only stay afloat, but thrive. Porta-Jib is picking up steam once again and Losmandy has whittled down the lead time for telescope mounts to about four to six weeks. I’m hoping to get a call by the end of next week telling me my mount is shipping.

I’m continuing my astronomical education – I devote hours every day to study. I started with our solar system and planetary/lunar observation, then astrophotography. Then I started learning the constellations and objects in our galaxy (The Milky Way). I’ve even reached out to distant galaxies. The techniques, equipment and software for photographing our solar system versus deep space objects are completely different and require new skillsets. Donna keeps saying that I’ve put in enough hours over the last six months to earn an Associate’s Degree in astrophotography!

We’ve had a pretty miserable winter by Arizona standards with extended cold, wet periods and only short breaks with clear skies and pleasant temperatures. This puts a damper on my astrophotography opportunities, so when they arise I tend to take advantage. Guys up north don’t have much sympathy for us desert dwellers when we complain of cold nights with temperatures dropping to 40 degrees. But to me, these temps feel very cold and I’m freezing when I have to spend hours trying to capture an image of a celestial body.

This week I decided to try my hand at capturing a nebula. Nebulae are fascinating to me and can be very challenging to image. There are five types of nebulae – emission nebulae, reflection nebulae, dark nebulae, planetary nebulae and supernova remnants. The first three listed all have irregular shapes. The planetary and supernova remnants are usually spherical. Planetary nebulae don’t have anything to do with planets – it’s a reference to their shape.

A nebula is mostly made of gases. The predominant gas is hydrogen alpha (Ha) followed by Oxygen III (OIII). Then there are other gases like sulphur and so on. They usually contain a certain amount of space dust as well. The Ha component appears red while the OIII appears blue. Dust can be brownish to almost black – dark nebulae are mostly dust that’s so thick light doesn’t pass through.

Nebulae can be the birthplace of stars. The gases combine into helium and other compounds creating mass. The mass creates a gravitational pull and over a period of millions of years can compress into a star. Supernova remnants are remnants of a dying star. In the final phase of a star’s lifetime, it turns into a red giant or a red dwarf before finally exploding, scattering matter in a swirling ball.

I went for the Orion Nebula (M42) in the constellation Orion. It’s located just below the three stars making up Orion’s belt, in the center of the stars forming Orion’s sword. In dark skies, people with good eyesight can see this nebula as a dim smudge. Most people would mistake it for a dim star. M42 is a considered a good beginner’s target because it’s easy to locate, relatively bright and fairly large. It’s over 1300 light years away from Earth and about 24 light years wide. It’s estimated to be three million years old.

To capture this image, I ran a series of 105-second exposures. I made 50 exposures and kept 49 – I had to discard one because an airplane or satellite crossed in front of my telescope leaving a white streak of light. It took about two and half hours to capture about 86 minutes of data. Processing the data into an image took me several more hours. It’s not the best image of the Orion nebula I’ve seen, but for a beginner’s first attempt, I think it’s more than good enough.

This was taken behind our house with much light pollution and a bright moon. I used a narrow duo-band filter to block unwanted light while allowing Ha and OIII bandwidths to pass. The telescope was my WIlliam Optic Z73 with a ZWO ASI533MC Pro camera.

Donna has almost completely harvested her first growth from the raised vegetable garden bed. She harvested collard greens, broccoli and tomatoes and is ready for round two – more tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, green beans, lettuce, spinach and herbs. She’s also staying busy with tennis and golf and has really upped her tennis game. Later this month, she’ll be rated by the tennis club. The rating process is important – it will determine which league she’s qualified for and what groups she plays with. I’m still coaching my pickleball clinic on Thursdays and playing two or three days a week – weather permitting.

For Valentine’s Day, I bought Donna a special treat – a box of chocolate covered strawberries! She tries to avoid too many sweets, but who can resist chocolate covered strawberries?

Donna hasn’t let up on her culinary skills. She made a couple of new dishes that were home runs in February. First up is a Japanese curry chicken. This took me back to my childhood – my mom made this dish and it was always a favorite.

Then there was an excellent grilled shrimp and sides of garlicky collard greens and cheesy grits.

Another chicken favorite was this chicken marsala plate.

Another excellent shrimp dish was this one – it’s called citrus skillet shrimp seasoned with fresh orange from our tree, shallots and jalapenos served with broccoli from our garden. Lots of homegrown bounty.

One more dish – grilled fennel-crusted rack of lamb served with grilled baby bok choy and sweet potato mash.

We’re expecting rain this afternoon with a high of only 57 degrees. The rain will continue overnight and into Thursday morning with the cool temperatures hanging around through Friday. By Sunday the forecast calls for 70 degrees. Yay!