Category Archives: Astronomy

Fourth and Final Housesit

We had our fourth and final housesit of the season at the end of August. I mentioned in my last post the construction work on our home, adding a half-bathroom and laundry nook. The work started a bit late on Monday, August 26th. There was some confusion on the expectation and what the construction crew thought they were doing. Donna had met with the contractor and had a fairly long discussion going over what she had in mind and how it should lay out. Ron, the owner of Paragon Home Services, said it looked straightforward and easy.

He sent me the job quote while Donna was away in Vermont. I looked it over, but I wasn’t there when they discussed the project. I wish he would have included a drawing of the layout instead of just a written description which was a little vague in my mind.

We had a meeting with Ron and his foreman, David. Once we were on the same page, they went to work. We thought we would be heading to our housesit in Alpine, California the next morning, but that was also a case of mis-communication. We actually had to arrive on Wednesday, August 28th. This was good as it allowed us to see how the home project was shaping up. Tuesday afternoon, as they were finishing up for the day, I asked David when he thought they would be finished. He said he thought it would take “a few more days” and he would send photos to my phone.

We left Mesa around 9am on Wednesday and made the familiar drive west on I-8. We’ve done this countless times over the years in cars, motorcycles and the motorhome. We made the usual stops – Dateland for a date shake, Yuma for gasoline before we hit California gas prices and El Centro for lunch at Las Palmitas Taco Shop. It’s a pretty authentic Mexican restaurant – my phone even said “Welcome to Mexico!”

We made good time and left I-8 at Japatul Valley Road east of Alpine. It was a little too early to show up at the ranch, so we did a drive-by to find the private road to the ranch, then went into Alpine. Donna bought a new charger for her phone – she forgot her charger at home and wanted a back-up anyway.

It was a 15-20 minute drive back to the ranch from town. After we arrived and had a tour of the house, a custom built ranch home with exquisite woodwork, we went out to the barn to see how things would be done. There were 13 sheep, five Border collies and a cat to take care of. The ranch is on 10 acres of land. The set up was impressive and included an on-demand back-up LP powered generator. If the power went out or dropped below a specified voltage, the generator would automatically start and the electrical power for the entire ranch would continue nearly seamlessly.

The number of animals seemed a bit overwhelming at first, but Donna adapted quickly and the Border collies were so well behaved they took very little care. On the first night, Marcy the home owner, had dinner for us and two other guests – one is a boarder that rents a small studio apartment attached to the barn. The other fellow was a friend from Great Britain, the Isle of Man specifically. It turned out that Sean and Jim were motorcycle enthusiasts and we had a lot of interesting conversations.

I didn’t take many photos – many missed opportunities. Here are a few landscape views of various points from the ranch house.

View south west – terrain is steeper than it looks

I found a suitable spot to set up my telescope and equipment. The preferred portion of the night sky would be in the northeast. This had the fewest obstructions and pointed away from the San Diego light dome, over the sparsely populated Cuyamaca National Forest, Laguna Mountains and desert to the east. We were about 2400 feet above sea level.

The days were warmer than normal with the high temperature exceeding 90 degrees. This was still about 20 degrees cooler than home. The nights were pleasant in the upper 60s.

Friday morning we drove to San Diego, about 40 miles away. I dropped Donna off at her sister, Sheila’s house in Point Loma. I went to Shelter Island to take some photos but made a stop for a quick lunch. Once I was out of the car at Shelter Island, I didn’t find any good photo opportunities for birds and wildlife. I took too long for lunch and was pressed for time. I saw one interesting thing – an amphibious vehicle, a duck tour bus.

We saw similar tour buses in Branson, Missouri but I had never seen one in San Diego before. I saw two of them at the boat ramp on Shelter Island.

Donna helped Sheila plan on the furniture layout for Donna’s mom. She is relocating to San Diego and will live in Sheila’s vacant Point Loma home with some help from a caregiver.

With my astrophotography effort limited to a northeast target, I was at a loss to find an interesting subject given the time of year. I decided on IC 1396, a star forming gas and space dust region in the northeast sky. This is a huge target and if I had known that was going to be the target, I would have brought my William Optics GT71 for its wide field of view. But, without knowing which direction I would be pointing, I brought the AT115EDT as I thought this was my best compromise, since it’s the mid-range of my telescopes. Not ideal.

I had issues the first two nights – it’s been months since I last tried to capture a deep sky object. I figured out the problems – there were a few settings on my laptop software that needed to be corrected. This happens sometimes when the good people at Microsoft automatically apply updates and they choose default settings for me. Grrr.

I ended up shooting two-minute exposures over four nights. I used a new-to-me filter setup. First I used an Askar Colormagic Ha+OIII filter. This brings out the red hydrogen component and bluish oxygen gas. The filters don’t add anything. On the contrary, they block unwanted bands of the light spectrum. This eliminates some effects of light pollution, in essence enhancing the desired color spectrum. Then I used an Askar Colormagic SII+OIII filter, This should allow more of the greenish and bluish light through. I did two nights of imaging with each filter.

IC 1396 is such a dim target that I couldn’t see what I was capturing with a single two-minute exposure, so I was shooting blind. When we came home, I went through the images and stacked 206 of the two-minute exposures for a total integrated time of six hours and 52 minutes. I was a little disappointed in the result, but here it is.

Speaking of coming home, we were in for a surprise. David never sent me photos of the finished construction. We found out why – it wasn’t finished when we came home 10 days later.

To be fair, there was a long weekend over Labor Day included. But here’s the thing. Ron never told us he was retiring on Friday, August 30, four days after the job started. David was taking over the company. David still didn’t have the full picture of job – note the lack of ceiling in the photos above. To compound the issue, when we were back, I noted that different workers showed up to do a part of the job each day and it seemed each worker only knew his or her small part of the job. No one seemed to know what the finished product was supposed to be. This goes back to Ron only doing a written description with no floorplan. He had the whole thing in his head and he was gone.

One of the workers, Brenda, also told me that excessive heat had them knocking off by 2pm on a few days. Well, it was finally finished on Tuesday, September 10th. Everything was straightened out and we were happy with the finished product. These are quick cell phone snap shots.

I also had them install a stainless steel restaurant style sink in the shed where the old washer/dryer was. This will be my knife sharpening and razor honing station. I need to do some finish work and clean out the shed too.

All of the boxes under the sink contain various whetstones for sharpening/ honing. That reminds me of another quick story. Before we left for Alpine, we met up with our friend, Marcia, for happy hour at Fat Willy’s. While we were there, Donna had to excuse herself to take an important phone call. While she was away, Marcia asked me what I was up to lately. She knows I dabble in a number of hobbies. I reluctantly brought up straight razor shaving and razor honing. I say reluctantly because eyes usually glaze over if I start talking about this topic.

Marcia asked me if I used whetstones. This surprised me. I was more surprised when she said she threw one out that very day! What? She said she had an old one in a box, but the box was broken and she didn’t have any use for it. Then she said it was just in her kitchen trash and she could retrieve it if I was interested in it. I told her I would like to look at it. I envisioned a coarse hardware store offering in a plastic box.

The next day she brought me this.

I could see under the gunk what appeared to be a translucent Arkansas stone in a wooden box! The top of the box was broken, but she had all four pieces. I asked her what she wanted for the stone and she said I could have it – she’d thrown it out.

A little Titebond glue and a couple of clamps was all it took to repair the wooden box top. I soaked the stone in Simple Green and gave it a good scrubbing. The stone is a butterscotch translucent Arkansas stone suitable for razor honing. It appears to be at least 70 years old – the stone itself is obviously millions of years old, I ‘m talking about when it was mined, cut and marketed. Without any stamps or labels, it’s impossible to accurately date the manufacturing era of this stone, but the box style and joinery seems to indicate a Pike-Norton from 1930s or 1940s. I’m not clear on whether this stone came from Marcia’s father or her grandfather.

Now I have two translucent Arkansas stones and both are old stones that were gifted to me. Makes me a happy guy.

A week from Thursday, we’ll board Hawaiian airlines for our trip to Japan. We’re excited about it and I have no idea what to expect. It’s been nearly 60 years since I’ve set foot there – I was just a little kid. Donna has a few ideas, but we mainly want to see the countryside and visit some smaller towns and villages to get a glimpse of the culture and lifestyle of the average person. We’ll see some of the tourist spots, but for me that’s not the main attraction.

We’ll be mostly offline for our two weeks in Japan, so I’ll try to catch up on our adventure after we return.

Stoned

The snowbird season is coming to a close. Many of the winter visitors at Viewpoint have departed for points north. Golf league and tennis league play has ended and I had my last tennis lesson of the season.

Donna and I intend to continue to play tennis through the summer in the mornings with other full-time residents. My goal is to become proficient enough to join a team in league play in the fall. I held my last pickleball class of the season at the end of March.

Donna found information for free admittance at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix on the second Tuesday of the month. So this past Tuesday, I grabbed my camera and few bottles of water and we headed there. We arrived around 9:30am and I was surprised at the full parking lots. We parked in the overflow lot and got our second surprise at the entrance. At the check-in area, we were asked if we had a reservation!

I thought this was really odd – like needing a reservation to visit the zoo or something. We told the guy we didn’t have reservation and it didn’t seem to matter. He just handed us a map and waved us in. We entered and it felt like we were at Disneyland. The walking paths were all crowded and little kids were everywhere. I brought my camera thinking I would be able to photograph birds in the gardens, but with all the people the birds seemed to have fled to the open desert.

We walked around for a bit, but it was like going down a crowded Walmart aisle. Oblivious people would stop in the middle of the path, blocking others from moving through. I shot a few pictures of flowers, but we soon tired of the place and left. I would not have been happy if we had paid for admission.

I wrote about a new natural whetstone I bought in my last post. Like most things I do, I had to take it up a notch. I enjoy sharpening knives – I find it almost meditative and doing so on natural stones adds another element to my enjoyment. The use of stones for sharpening tools by humans predates any historical reference. Homer wrote about Cretan whetstones in The Iliad and Odyssey more than 12 centuries ago.

The truth is, natural whetstones are harder to use than man made synthetic whetstones. The biggest difference is the consistency of the stones. Modern synthetic whetstones have abrasives that are usually some form of aluminum oxide or silicon carbide. These abrasive particles are uniform in size and shape and are held by a binder that wears down and constantly releases fresh abrasive particles. The stones are engineered with different binder compounds that can be relatively soft or hard.

Natural stones on the other hand are cut from various types of rocks. They are quarried or mined from seams of mostly homogenous stone types that are naturally abrasive. The abrasive particles are randomly distributed and are bound together with other natural compounds that have fused together from heat and pressure over millions of years. These stones are found and mined all over the world, but the most desirable stones originate from Japan, Belgium and Arkansas in the USA. There are many other lesser known stones from other countries.

The Japanese and Belgian stones can be very expensive – some are considered collectible. I didn’t want to go down that rabbit hole, so I sought out lesser known stones like the Indonesian stone I wrote about before. I bought two more Indonesians – a medium and a medium/fine to go with the fine stone. These stones are called Red Stone (Batu Beureum in Sundanese – the language of West Java), Black Stone (Batu Hideung) and White Stone (Batu Bodas) respectively.

Red, Black and White Indonesian whetstones

I don’t let my Japanese kitchen knives get very dull, so these three stones are a good progression for sharpening them. If the knives were very dull or chipped, I would start with a soft, coarse synthetic stone. I would do the same if I was sharpening a softer stainless steel knife like a German Henckels or Wusthof.

I took things a step further and added a couple of fine finishing stones. The first one is Japanese – an Ocean Blue Tsushima whetstone. Tsushima stones come from two mines – one on a mountain on Tsushima Island – these are usually brownish – the other mine was under the ocean off of the coast of Tsushima. These are black or dark blue. The mines closed in the 1980s, but there are still plenty of stone blocks available.

The other finishing stone came from a mine on Velky Rozsutec – a mountain in the Mala Fatra range in Slovakia. These stones are favored by farmers in that part of the world for sharpening scythes and for knives. The stones were mined and cut by one man until his passing in 2013. A few years later, his son and daughter took over the business and began cutting and selling whetstones.

Rozsutec stones are unique. They are cut from a very hard strata of sandstone. I usually think of sandstone as a soft, crumbly type of stone. Not these. They are very hard and long wearing stones. The silica grains cut the metal when sharpening. Over time, these grains don’t release, they slowly flatten and the stone get smoother. At some point it needs to be conditioned by flattening the surface with a harder stone or diamond plate to expose fresh grit.

I use the Tsushima and Rozsutec in the final stage of sharpening. These require a very light touch and can provide an extremely keen, razor-sharp edge on hard steel. I used all these natural stones on my Sanjo sujihiki ( a Japanese slicer blade) and got a very fine edge. When I used it to cut a pork tenderloin, it practically fell through the meat. As an experiment, I held the blade between my thumb and first two fingers and slid the 240mm blade across the tenderloin with no pressure other than the weight of the blade. It cut cleanly through!

For the past several weeks I’ve been striking out on astrophotography. The nights have been either cloudy or the targets were too close to nearly full or bright full moons. When I shoot from the east tennis court lot here at Viewpoint, my preference is to locate targets that are in the north or east. This keeps me pointed away from the worst of the light pollution, but it’s still a light polluted sky.

Last week I caught a break. I set up on Tuesday night, March 2nd, but was stymied by technical problems (software). I went back out on Wednesday and was able to begin imaging a little after 8pm. I shot 80 exposures, 90 seconds each and packed up. I knew it wasn’t enough – I was targeting a very distant and dim galaxy – the Needle Galaxy (NGC 4565). This is an edge-on galaxy around 40 million light years away from earth.

A week later I had favorable conditions and went after it again. I repeated my earlier effort and picked up 80 more exposures. I used my Astro-Tech 115EDT telescope with a 0.8X reducer/flattener. This gave me a focal length of 644mm and an F5.6 aperture – you photographers out there will know what I mean. I try to keep exposures under 90 seconds in the heavy light pollution – preferably 75 or 60 seconds. This galaxy was so dim, I knew I needed to push the envelope and F5.6 allowed me gather enough light at 90 seconds.

My APM 140 with a focal length of 980mm would have been a better field of view for this target, but at F7 I think I would need a lot more time on target. It worked out better than I expected with the AT 115EDT.

If you click on the photo above to enlarge, you might be able to find three more galaxies in the image – they are much farther away and small.

As usual, Donna is feeding me well. Here are a couple of typical dinner plates from the past month. I bought a USDA Prime tri-tip at Costco and smoked it on the Traeger smoker/grill. Donna served it with sweet potato and green beans.

Another meal was simple grilled chicken seasoned with salt and pepper served with grilled peppers and onions with feta and grilled bok choy.

The weather for the past month has been a little strange. We’ve had very pleasant stretches with highs in the mid-70s, but also had rain at least one day per week accompanied by a couple of cool days with highs in the low 60s. It seems like that’s all in the past now. Today the forecast calls for low 90s. The next two weeks call for highs ranging from the mid-70s to 80s and sunny skies.

Hearts and Roses

It’s been more than a minute since I last posted – in fact, it’s been about six weeks! It was easier to find topics of interest when we were on the road full-time. New surroundings, projects galore to keep everything functional on the RV – always something to talk about. Not that life here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort is boring – there’s always something going on. But it gets redundant to post about daily life without fresh topics.

This week we had Valentines Day. I don’t get charged up about Hallmark holidays. Maybe I’m just not a romantic type, but I really don’t get it. When we lived in Michigan they also celebrated something called “Sweetest Day.” I think it’s common in the Midwest. To me, it’s another Hallmark holiday made up to sell cards and candies. Bah humbug!

Last year after I started my deep dive into astrophotography, I imaged the Rosette Nebula. I counted it as one of my more successful attempts. I only had 71 minutes of data and the image was quite noisy. I knew I could improve it, but didn’t have a chance to capture it again until this week. I went out on Tuesday and Wednesday night and set up at the East tennis court parking lot.

Tuesday night things went well – until they didn’t. After about 40 one-minute exposures, I had a data transfer failure from the ZWO ASI533 MC Pro camera to the NINA software on my laptop. After a few frantic moments of troubleshooting, I disconnected the camera and restarted it. I was up and running again. It seems I always have moment of drama when I’m imaging the night sky. Things ran smoothly after that. The quality of the exposures seemed good.

Wednesday night was the smoothest session I’ve ever experienced. Everything worked as it should, the mount tracked flawlessly and quality of my captures was better than ever. Altogether over the two sessions I had 221 one-minute exposures. During processing of these sub-exposures, I culled eight substandard captures, leaving 213. That’s a 96% keeper rate. Outstanding! I’ve also improved my image processing. Once I stacked the 213 sub-exposures and made corrections, the final image was very satisfying. The improvement over my early effort 11 months ago is pretty dramatic in my opinion.

The total integration time of three hours and 33 minutes reduced the background noise and also improved the detail and color of the nebula. Here is the latest image.

This is what I came up with 11 months ago.

These images were shot with the same camera, filter and software. The telescope in the old photo was a William Optics Zenithstar 73 – a fine doublet telescope. I replaced the Z73 with a William Optics Gran Turismo 71 and used a 0.8X reducer. The GT71 is a triplet and an upgrade over the Z73, but I think that had little to do with the overall results. I also used the Losmandy GM 811G mount vs the Skywatcher HEQ5 I used to have. The stars are tighter in the latest photo – that may be due to me focusing more carefully than when I first started. The background is much smoother – it doesn’t have the gritty noise of the earlier photo. This is mostly due to the longer integration time – three and half hours vs 71 minutes. The other wildcard is atmospheric conditions – I have no control over that other than to pass on nights when conditions are really poor.

Donna is off to band rehearsal this morning. The Viewpoint Concert Band has a performance scheduled for tomorrow night. This will be the third of four concerts scheduled this season. Donna is the president of the Viewpoint Concert Band board of directors. She’s also the secretary of the Viewpoint Tennis Club and she’s the founder and heads up the Viewpoint Good Neighbors program. In her spare time, she golfs in the ladies golf league and tries to get on the golf course a couple of times per week. To say she’s always on the run is an understatement.

I almost forgot about another nebula image I captured at the end of January. This is the Heart Nebula captured with my GT71 and Player One Poseidon C-Pro camera. This was captured with 104 90-second sub-exposures for a total time of two hours and 34 minutes. The atmosperic conditions were less than favorable with the moon at 84% illumination.

Donna just pointed out that while I am not a fan of Hallmark holidays, I did choose appropriate targets for Valentine’s Day – a rosette and a heart!

After a wet and relatively cold start to February, we have great weather forecast to continue through the end of the month. Today we should hit the mid-70s and the thermometer will top out there daily with mostly sunny skies. Can’t complain about that! Donna will miss some of our good weather to go to equally good weather in Florida. She’s meeting two sisters and a cousin and they’re doing a half marathon in Key West, Florida next weekend.

Edit: If you click on the Rosette Nebula photos, they will open in a new pane. Then click on the photo again and it will expand. This will allow you to easily see the quality differences I mention.

Gucci USB

Happy New Year, first of all. I hope you all had an enjoyable holiday season and a merry Christmas. We certainly enjoyed Thanksgiving and Christmas. Donna’s Good Neighbor group shared holiday meals with many older residents of Viewpoint that were homebound or alone over the holidays.

We’re staying busy as usual and settling into our winter routines. Of course, Donna is involved with many more activities than I am – she’s always on the go. I’m running pickleball coaching sessions once a week and taking tennis lessons two days a week. Something that has become a habit is Friday afternoon/evening visits to RJs cigar lounge with Mike Hall. We catch up on events and solve world issues. Sometimes Mike’s wife, Jodi, and Donna join us. I usually puff a premium cigar with rum on the rocks.

Donna has been after me for a while to do something about hearing impairment. I have hearing loss – it’s no wonder really. A lifetime around shop machinery, playing electric guitars, racing motorcycles and shooting guns takes a toll. For some reason, I’ve resisted checking out hearing aids. Since hearing aids were approved for over-the-counter, prices have dropped dramatically.

I did some online research and found that traditional hearing centers convince patients that their services are required and they offer expert advice at no cost. In reality, they bake the cost of their enterprise – building rent, employment expense, etc. – into the price of the hearing aids. Nowadays, hearing tests can be done online with decent headphones. Test results can be analyzed and hearing aids with custom correction profiles can be ordered and shipped to your home.

I chose a company called Jabra – they’re part of the GN Hearing group. They’re headquartered in Denmark. I took the test on their site and submitted my results. I ordered a pair of their Enhance Select 100 hearing aids for $1699. I also downloaded an app for my Samsung Galaxy that connects via Bluetooth to my hearing aids – I can adjust them for different surroundings and scenarios on the fly with my phone.

I can hear so much more now. I love them and wish I would have done this earlier. If you are interested in their products, I have a link to a discount for referrals. I have an online Zoom appointment with a Jabra specialist on the 11th to go over any questions that may have come to mind after using them for a while. They can also customize the settings if I wish to modify it. The purchase price included three years of warranty and support.

When I go to the Cigar Lounge, I change the hearing aid setting to “Restaurant.” This makes nearby conversation easy to hear while muffling background noise and conversation. On the tennis or pickleball courts I switch it to “Outdoors.” This blocks wind noise and muffles loud sounds. Pretty convenient.

I’ve been putting time into astrophotography – nothing new there. It takes about five hours for a two-and-a-half-hour imaging session when you consider set-up, calibration and tear-down. In October, I imaged M31 – the Andromeda Galaxy. This galaxy has been a nemesis. I’ve had a hard time getting enough usable data to process a good picture. It seems like Murphy’s Law strikes every time I go for this target. One night I had good conditions and set everything up only to have communication failures between my gear and laptop. After two hours, I gave up. I ordered some replacement cables. Then I had to wait for another clear night with good seeing conditions. It finally came about and I captured about two and a half hours of 60-second exposures on December 14th.

A week went by before I had good astrophotography conditions again and I set up at the east tennis court parking lot here at Viewpoint. I captured another three hours. After culling out bad frames, I stacked and integrated 297 frames for four hours and 57 minutes of data. I’m fairly happy with the result and I can give Andromeda a break for a while. Maybe next year I’ll see if I can improve it as my skills increase with more experience.

The Andromeda Galaxy is about 2.5 million light years away from Earth. I used my new William Optics GT71 telescope with a 0.8 reducer/flattener and Player One Poseidon cooled astrophotography camera. I used an Optolong L-Pro filter to fight the light pollution and moonglow.

Next, I wanted to capture something new. After looking at the best possibilities, I settled on NGC 281 – the Pacman Nebula. I chose it because it would be high in the sky from 7pm to 10pm. Telescopes work best on objects that are near the zenith – that is, overhead. That’s because when the objects are nearly straight up, there’s less atmosphere to penetrate. If we shoot at a low angle, we have to deal with much more atmospheric disturbance.

Once again, I set up and ran through calibration only to find communication errors. Data wouldn’t transfer from my camera to my laptop. After much wrangling, I isolated the problem to the USB hub. Most modern laptops only have one or two USB-A type ports. I need a minimum of four, so I use a hub for more ports. I was kicking myself when I realized the hub was the problem. I had all this software and equipment and I link it through a $20 hub from Amazon. Not smart.

The demands of an imaging camera and a guidescope camera along with mount guiding commands and so on put a lot strain on the hub’s ability to quickly distribute and transfer data. I did some research and found that most guys are using independently powered USB hubs – they don’t pull any voltage through the laptop USB port. That way constant voltage is supplied through a separate connection and the laptop port only handles data. I found a number of complaints about cheap hubs not working when it gets colder outside. This makes sense if you consider they are designed to work in your home or office where the temperature is fairly constant and only ranges from maybe 60 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

I decided to bite the bullet and get a good hub. I ordered a Pegasus USB hub that is considered industrial grade. It has a certified working temperature range of -40 to +185 degrees Fahrenheit. It took a bite out of my wallet at $200 versus the Amazon $20 hub, but I’m confident this one will work. Actually, I hedged my bet – I also ordered an Amazon $40 powered USB hub for back-up purposes. There’s no worse feeling than to set all of the gear up for a night of imaging, only to fail to even get started because of equipment failure – especially something as simple as a USB connection.

Once I had the new hub – which my friend Mike Hall calls the “Gucci” hub – I had wait out the weather. I finally had a promising night on December 30th. I set up at the east tennis courts and everything calibrated fine. There was a full moon, but as it was rising in the east, I was shooting almost straight up slightly facing the northwest.

This turned out to be the first time I experienced what appeared to be clear skies, but with so much atmospheric turbulence that I struggled to get usable images. After an hour and half or so, things seems to settle down and the session improved. I knew I didn’t have enough to create a decent final image though.

The next clear night was January 2nd. This turned out to be excellent seeing conditions and I captured more than two and half hours of 75-second exposures. The moon didn’t rise until about 9pm so I had good skies most of the night, light pollution notwithstanding.

I had to throw out about half of my first night’s effort, but kept nearly all of the second night – I think I only culled three or four frames out of 125. I had three hours and 52 minutes total integration time. The Pacman Nebula is in the constellation Cassiopeia, about 9,500 light years away from earth. If you remember the video game Pacman from the early 80s, the nebula resembles the Pacman about to gobble up some stars.

I captured this image with my AT115 EDT telescope and ZWO ASI533MC Pro cooled astrophotography camera. The light pollution and moonglow made it difficult to capture much of the oxygen gases that emit blue light, but I’m happy with the final result.

Donna got an air fryer and has been experimenting with it. It’s a story in itself, how she acquired the air fryer through a generous gift but then traded with a friend for a smaller air fryer. The original air fryer was too large for our small kitchen and storage space. Her friend Deborah had a new smaller one and was interested in a larger one, so they swapped.

One of the meals she made was air-fried tilapia. A simple meal ideal for the fryer.

Best wishes for 2024 – another trip around the sun.

Good Neighbors

I posted less than a month ago, but it feels like a long time ago. I guess that’s because we had an eventful November. Most of it good with a couple of exceptions.

Donna started a group here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort over the summer and things got into full swing in the last month or so. It’s called Viewpoint Good Neighbors. She organized a group of volunteers to help some of the elderly residents of Viewpoint. They can provide companionship, help with household chores and also provide meals for people that are mostly alone and/or homebound. She has over 40 volunteers in the group and she’s kept very busy as residents reach out to her and she finds volunteers to accommodate them.

She also has band practice with the Viewpoint Concert Band and she’s a board member of the band. As they gear up for another season, she’s been busy with meetings and planning. On top of that, she’s on the Viewpoint Tennis Club Executive Committee. Whew!

I’ve been taking tennis lessons twice a week and also getting out to practice a bit – so I’m on the courts three times a week usually. I haven’t had much time for pickleball – the lower courts are still closed for refinishing and the upper courts attract a crowd. I’ll be starting my pickleball coaching sessions soon – I think.

Of course, Thanksgiving was a busy week. Donna had several meal deliveries and various assignments for the Good Neighbors. They provided relief for many of the elderly people with no local family and she can be proud of what they accomplished. We enjoyed the dinner Donna prepared – she bought a brined turkey breast from Winco. It was actually a whole turkey minus the wings and legs – I mean a full bone-in breast and back. She stuffed it and served a traditional style meal with sliced turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy with sides of roasted brussel sprouts and butternut squash. She fixed plates for our neighbors and a 94-year old man that was alone at home.

Last week, I found a whole USDA Prime beef tenderloin – about five pounds of super-tender beef. I trimmed it and cut it into filet mignon steaks. Donna vacuum sealed and froze seven or eight steaks plus some tips from the trimming that she will turn into steak bites – yum. I grilled two filets for dinner last Wednesday and they were outstanding. Donna added sauteed mushrooms and onions along with broccoli and baked potatoes on the side.

Now, for the not-so-good stuff. First, I had some sensitivity in one of my teeth and chewing was sometimes painful. It was a lower molar on my right jaw (tooth number 30). I went to the dentist and he scheduled me for a root canal. Ugh! We got it done along with a new ceramic crown replacing the old gold onlay. But I wasn’t finished with the dentist.

Two nights later, I got up in the night to use the bathroom. I’m usually careful about standing up too quickly after I’ve been down for a while – sometimes my blood pressure drops and I can get dizzy. I had a painful episode of this a while back when we were in Cortez, Colorado. This time I must have stood up straight away and took a few steps into the bathroom. The next thing I knew Donna was helping me up as I spit blood and pieces of my teeth into the bath tub. I had a syncope episode – that is, I briefly fainted and fell into the shower tub unconscious.

I was disoriented and had four front teeth broken, rib pain and a bloody lip. I also hit my forehead and had a concussion. Donna was worried most about that and called 911. I was transported to Banner Baywood Hospital for tests. After four hours or so, they sent me home. They didn’t find any conclusive abnormalities and the dental damage was the worst of it. I went back to the dentist the next day and they had to extract what was left of one tooth and make a temporary bridge and crown. I’ll finish the dental work in February.

Meanwhile, Donna had a veneer come off one of her front teeth. She then had a temporary that kept falling off, but she has the permanent veneer in place now and is good to go. So much for the dental stories.

I finally had a chance to take out my William Optics GT71 telescope last Saturday night. The moon was rising late and the forecast called for clear skies. The “seeing” forecast wasn’t the greatest and some atmospheric disturbance was predicted.

I had a few challenges – astrophotography isn’t easy and I often remind myself of that. Figuring out my issues took some time and I started imaging later than I planned. Then I had some high, thin clouds that ended my session. I made a major blunder – I had my software set up for the Player One astro camera, but I was using my ZWO ASI533MC astro camera. By the time I realized this, it was too late to make any changes. This resulted in a noisier image than what I should have captured, but it’s okay. I need to get out again and add more data to get a really good image anyway.

I shot 130 captures of 60 seconds each. I had to cull some of them for various quality reasons and ended up with 102 minutes of integrated data of the Pleiades star cluster. Pleiades is an interesting target. It’s called various names – Pleiades, Seven Sisters, Subaru. The name Pleiades comes from ancient Greek mythology. The star cluster has nine named stars though – the seven sisters are Sterope, Merope, Electra, Maya, Taygeta, Celeano and Alcyone. The other two stars are named after their mythological parents, Atlas and Pleione.

I’m pretty happy with the color in the image – the William Optics GT71 triplet has great color rendition. The bluish nebulosity seen in the photo are from the stars shining through space dust. Pleiades is the closest star cluster at a distance of about 440 light years from earth. I captured this photo from our light polluted neighborhood in Mesa, Arizona. Pleiades was the first deep-sky object I imaged, although I did that from the darker sky found at Weaver Needle Viewpoint. From there you can easily see Pleiades with the naked eye. In cities, it’s very hard to see. With more time on target, I should capture a larger field of nebulosity.

As usual, I’ll close with a couple of Donn’a dinner plates. First we have grilled salmon and bok choy over vegetable fried rice.

Next up was a real winner – Alaskan pollock gratin with green beans.

We had a little rain Thursday night and Friday morning, but the sun was out by noon. It has been colder than usual with highs around 60 in the last few days, but 80 degree temperature should return by tomorrow.

Doublets and Triplets

We’ve turned the corner and finally see a change in season. This is true regarding the weather as well as the occupancy here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort. The last time the thermometer hit 100 degrees was October 21st – we haven’t been in the 90s since the 22nd of October. Daily highs range from the low to mid 80s.

The seasonal visitors (Snowbirds) from the north have arrived and the park is nearly full. This is really evident on the pickleball courts and the golf course. I haven’t started my pickleball coaching sessions for this winter yet, the pickleball courts will close for resurfacing next week. Unfortunately, the summer temperatures are too high for the surface to cure properly, so they’ll be doing the work now while demand for courts is high.

Donna convinced me to take up tennis. I started beginner tennis lessons last week and I’m hooked already. I’ve long been a fan of professional tennis and have been watching all of the major professional tournaments on TV since the days of Jimmy Connors and Bjorn Borg – that’s a long time ago! It’s not an easy game to learn, but I think taking lessons and getting my form and technique right from the start is the way to go. We have nine tennis courts here at Viewpoint and the tennis club is very active and well organized.

Donna is now playing tennis at the 3.0 level and plays in league tournaments. The league tournaments are played against teams from other parks in the area such as Leisure World and Mesa Regal. She’s playing really well and having a lot of fun.

Learning a new sport at the age of 67 is challenging. Pickleball skills don’t really transfer to tennis – it’s a new ball game for me. I’m looking forward to learning and with any luck I’ll be playing recreational tennis with the club within a few months.

I haven’t been out for any astrophotography sessions since I captured the Eastern Veil – see my last post. I avoided the full moon period and we had a few nights with high, thin clouds. I picked up a new telescope though. Telescopes, refractors to be more precise, come in a few flavors and design choices affect how suitable they are for certain tasks.

For astrophotography, these choices can be critical, as photos will show aberrations that we may not notice so much when observing through an eyepiece. One of the first considerations is the type of optical glass used – this can have a huge effect on the amount of apparent chromatic aberration (false color). There are trade-offs as each choice is a compromise. Most astronomers agree that a lens ground from fluorite crystal is the best. But it is very difficult to work with and very expensive.

A few companies have developed synthetic crystals that can rival natural flourite. The most popular is made by Ohara – a Japanese company – and it’s called FPL53. There are a few others, but FPL53 is the benchmark. They make another optical glass that’s slightly inferior when tested for chromatic aberration called FPL51. This glass is lower priced than FPL53 and relatively easy to grind and figure.

The two most popular designs for refractor telescopes are called doublets and triplets. As the name implies, a doublet had a lens cell utilizing two elements. To make a high-quality doublet, you must start with high-quality lens material to combat chromatic aberration and very precise grinding and figuring to reduce any spherical aberration.

The triplet has a lens cell with three elements. By grinding and figuring three lens, the optician has more design freedom on how the elements will interact and these designs are inherently superior to doublets. However, they are more costly and also heavier. Some great telescope designers and manufacturers such as Roland Christen of Astro-Physics claim they can make a doublet that equals a triplet in image quality, however it is more difficult and time consuming to achieve this.

I’ve explained all that to give some background on my new telescope. My first refractor was a William Optics ZenithStar 73III – a doublet made with excellent FPL53 glass. I loved that telescope and I started my astrophotography journey with it. WIlliam Optics has a great reputation for quality and customer service. Last month, I saw a special offer from Agena Astro – my go-to online retailer for all things astronomy-wise.

They offered the William Optics Grand Turismo 71 with a 0.8X reducer/field flattener and a William Optics guidescope for an unbelievable package price. The GT71 is similar to my Z73, but it’s a triplet made with FPL53 and people rave about it. I placed the order and listed my Z73 for sale. I sold the Z73 within a week and parlayed the cash into the GT71. I haven’t used it yet, but I know it’ll be great.

Externally the Z73 and GT71 look very similar. But, we know the triplet with FPL53 should handily outperform a doublet with the same material. The field flattener converts a telescope into an astrograph suitable for astrophotography. Without it, the image would have something known as field curvature which distorts the outer edges and corners of the image – stars would look like footballs or pear-shaped for example.

William Optics Gran Turismo 71 – 0.8X reducer/flattener mounted on the end of the scope

My Z73 had a 1.0X field flattener, meaning it corrected field curvature without changing any other aspect of the scope. My new GT71 has a 0.8X reducer/flattener. This not only corrects the field curvature, but through the magic of optical design, it reduces the effective focal length and changes the focal ratio – you end up with a wider field of view and a faster scope – a faster scope collects light more quickly than a slower scope and can capture images in less time. All three of my telescopes are equipped with field flatteners – a 1.0X on the APM 140 and a 0.8X on the AT 115EDT. I also have a 1.0X for the AT 115EDT.

I’m planning to try a capture of Jupiter tonight. I have to reconfigure the APM 140 for planetary work. I haven’t shot a planetary or lunar image in nearly a year. I have to wrap my head around the different requirements and software for this – it’s much different than capturing a Deep Sky Object.

My legs are a little sore and fatigued this morning. Not only did I have tennis lessons on Wednesday and Friday, on Thursday Donna and I practiced on the tennis court for an hour and Friday morning I spent an hour hiking through the riparian preserve.

As we head toward winter, more migratory birds are in the area. I also found many more people at the riparian preserve than a couple of months ago when it was still hot outside.

I shot a few bird images – that was the reason for hiking through the riparian preserve.

Black-crowned Night Heron – I like how the out-of-focus leaves in the foreground create a natural vignette

Last week I found USDA Prime tri-tip at Costco. Tri-tip is one of my favorite cuts of beef – I wrote about it here and here. I smoked it on the Traeger and Donna served it with jalapeno corn bread (made with jalapenos from her garden), green beans and sweet potato pierogies. Delicious!

As I mentioned, we’ve reached the time of year when cooler weather prevails. The forecast for the next couple of weeks calls for highs in the mid-70s to mid-80s with a chance of rain late next week. By the end of the month, we may have highs in the upper 60s – chilly by Valley of the Sun standards.

Cigars and Stars

Another month has flown by – we’re only a week away from Halloween! October began with Donna taking a trip to Bennington, Vermont to visit her parents. I drove Donna to the airport in the early morning of Tuesday, October 3rd. I had time after dropping her off for a quick breakfast and coffee before sunrise. Then I packed my photography gear and headed over to the Riparian Preserve in Gilbert. The first hour or so after sunrise usually has great light for photography.

I shot a few bird photos that I thought were nice. This hummingbird is puffed up, warming herself in the sunrise.

I shot a sequence of a snowy egret skimming the water and capturing a fish for breakfast.

The third photo of the sequence above shows the nice early morning light on the back of the egret’s wings. I also captured an image of cormorants in flight.

The cormorants are flying toward the sunrise and the light on their underside is very nice.

The glassy water reflects the image of these black-neck stilts.

I also liked the simple composition of this black phoebe photo.

Friday, October 6th was my birthday. Donna was away, but she left me a card with a gift certificate for RJ’s Cigars. This was just right as I planned to go to RJ’s Cigar Lounge and enjoy a top-shelf cigar for my birthday. I also want to give a shout out and thank you to long-time blog follower, Miriam Armbrester. Miriam sent me a birthday card. I really appreciate the fact that she took the time to select a card and send it to me in the mail. We met Miriam and her husband, Rand, when we were in Alabama in 2018. They treated us to lunch at the oldest restaurant in Alabama – I wrote about it her e.

Donna came back from Vermont on Sunday, October 8th. During the month of October and into November, many of the winter snowbirds return to Viewpoint. Residents of the northern states and Canada return as the weather here cools and becomes downright cold in the areas they summer in. We’ve had slightly cooler weather with a few exceptions where we had very warm afternoons. The evenings are pleasant and overnights are much cooler now.

My last attempt at astrophotography was on our trip to our housesit in Cortez, Colorado. I was foiled by clouds there. The summer months of July through September were too hot here for astrophotography. Here’s the thing – I use dedicated astrophotogrphy cameras for deep sky objects. These cameras have electronically cooled sensors to capture the image.

Deep sky objects are so dim and so far away that long exposure times are necessary. If the image sensor gets too hot, it creates noise – that is, random pixels will glow in uncontrolled ways, making the image appear grainy and lack clarity. For deep sky photography, I like to maintain the sensor temperature at zero degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit). My best camera is able to cool the sensor 35 degrees Celsius below the ambient temperature – others are capable of cooling 30 degrees Celsius below ambient.

In the summer here, it’s not uncommon for the ambient temperature to remain above 90 degrees (about 30 degrees Celsius) well after dark. This would mean my camera’s cooling system would have to run at 100% output continuously to try and cool the sensor enough. I don’t like to run it above 50% and once cool, it should maintain the temperature with about 25% output. Thus, I give up astrophotography here in the summer. I could photograph planets or the moon. These are such bright objects, they can be captured with very short exposures and do not need cooling. But I find it hard to motivate myself to set up my gear when it’s hot outside and doesn’t get dark until after 9pm.

Lately, the temperature has been dropping to around 80 degrees shortly after sunset. I still have some new gear that I bought earlier this summer, but haven’t been able to try out. While Donna was away, I set up here at the Northpoint Recreation Center in the Viewpoint Resort. I used my Player One Poseidon astro-camera for the first time. I had some technical difficulties the first night and had to give up. I went back out on October 4th and captured just short of three hours of usable 75 second sub-exposures. This is the Andromeda Galaxy, one of the first deep sky targets I attempted when I got into this hobby about 10 months ago. This is an improvement over my earlier attempt, but it needs more time to reveal the detail.

Although this galaxy is over two million light years away from earth, it’s the closest galaxy to our own Milky Way galaxy.

I mentioned technical difficulties – they hit again the next time I went out. I was very frustrated and finally figured the laptop I was using, which was a refurbished unit I bought on Amazon had signs of impending hard drive failure. I bit the bullet and went to Best Buy and bought a better laptop with a 1TB solid state drive.

Unfortunately, the new laptop was loaded with Windows 11 – the old one was Windows 10. Most of the astrophotography open source (free) software I use was developed for Windows 10. I had to download all of the software programs and reconfigure everything. Some software, NINA for example, had to have new paths configured to communicate with other needed programs. NINA manages my session, communicating with as many as four other programs simultaneously. I’m not that computer savvy and it took a lot frustrating trial and error to get it working.

I’ve wanted to capture an image of the Eastern Veil Nebula for a while – it was to be my target when we were in Cortez, Colorado. It’s getting a little late in the year, but I went for it. My first session was full of technical issues that resulted in only 76 minutes of usable data.

After finally getting all of my gear and software to play nice, I added two more sessions for a total time of four hours and 23 minutes. This produced a nicely detailed view with vibrant, saturated color. The red areas are hydrogen gas and the blue is oxygen.

The Eastern Veil Nebula is located in the constellation Cygnus. It’s part of a large supernova complex called the Cynus Loop. The entire loop is quite large with distinct areas of gas created when a large star (20 times the size of our sun) died. When stars die (supernova) the outer areas explode away from the core creating these vast clouds of gas, while the core implodes into a high density mass that may become a black hole.

In the photo above, you can see traces of hydrogen throughout, leaving a reddish cast. I might try to capture more of the Cynus Loop – the Western Veil and Pickering’s Triangle.

With Donna back home again, I’ve enjoyed some gourmet dinners. First I’ll share the sheet-pan chicken with shallots and grapes. Served over spaghetti squash, it was an interesting and delicious dish.

Another goody was creamy scallops with fresh tomatoes.

Creamy scallops with fresh tomatoes and steamed spinach on the side

Although the thermometer flirted with 100 degrees last week, the week ahead and into November calls for highs in the low 80s and eventually down to the 70s. Looking forward to that!

Cortez Housesit

Another month is history as time marches onward. August wasn’t very eventful here – it’s the hottest month of the year and this year we had very little monsoon activity. I spent an inordinate amount of time indoors, enjoying the cool air conditioning.

Donna gets out to golf at least once a week and also plays tennis three times a week in the early morning hours. When she golfs the nine-hole course, I usually sit on the back deck with a cup of coffee about 45 or 50 minutes after her tee time. I use an old pair of cheap Bushnell binoculars and pick her up on the fourth hole green, then watch as she hits the fifth hole right behind our place.

After doing that one morning, I had a wild idea about upgrading to a decent pair of binoculars. I looked online for a couple of days, then decided I needed to have a hands-on comparison. So I drove over to Bass Pro Shop near Dobson Road and the Loop 202 in northwest Mesa. Mesa is a big city – nearly 140 square miles and it’s the third largest in Arizona by population after Phoenix and Tucson. I’m getting off track – I meant to say it’s about an 18-mile drive from Viewpoint in east Mesa to Bass Pro in northwest Mesa.

The optics department in the Bass Pro Shop is on the second floor on the east side. I was able to handle and look through a number of binoculars. On the upper west wall of the store are a series of windows – the clerk told me it’s 91 yards from the optics counter to the west wall. That’s right – you could fit a football field inside of the store! He then told me I should look through the second window from the left and find a large white house with a red tile roof on Camelback Mountain. That house was just over eight miles away.

I was astounded! With all of the binoculars I sampled, I could focus through a window 91 yards away and get detail on the house eight miles away! I was mainly interested in 8X (eight power – the views appear eight times closer than the actual distance). I also tried 10X. For me, 10X is pushing it. Although it makes objects appear closer than 8X and can provide more detail, this is offset by my inability to hold the larger binocular steady enough to take advantage of any detail improvement.

I tried a few different brands and price ranges. I was tempted to break the bank on a high-end set, but kept my sanity. I found that once I reached a certain quality level, any improvements were incremental. Spending twice as much didn’t make the view twice as good to my eye. I ended up buying 8X42 Vortex binoculars that are light years ahead of the Bushnell binoculars I was using.

I took the binoculars out at night and could see surprising detail on the moon. Not on the same level as my telescopes, but better than I expected.

We had a housesit scheduled at the end of the month in Cortez, Colorado. It’s about a 400-mile drive from Mesa. The homeowner wanted us to arrive around 10:30 or 11:00 am on Thursday, August 31st. That would mean a dark-thirty departure, so we opted to leave on Wednesday and stop halfway in Gallup, New Mexico. I loaded the Jeep Compass with my astronomy gear – I took my Astro-Tech AT115EDT telescope and Losmandy mount. I had a target in mind for the dark skies we anticipated at the property outside of town. I also brought my binoculars.

We left around 9:15 am and made it to the Royal Holiday Motel in Gallup around 3 pm – we’d lost an hour crossing into Mountain Daylight Time at the New Mexico border. Gallup can be a rough-and-tumble town. We were on the west side along Route 66, a boulevard lined with motels. We drove downtown and had dinner at a diner with traditional New Mexico cuisine. After dinner, we went to the historic Hotel el Rancho for a cocktail.

The Hotel el Rancho has been in Gallup since the 1940s and many film stars have hung their hat there while making movies in locations nearby. Hollywood stars including John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn, Kirk Douglas, Gregory Peck and Suzanna Pleschette have stayed there. More recently Emilio Estevez, Lou Diamond Phillips and Kiefer Sutherland and others were there to film Young Guns II. They had many framed photographs and memorabilia on display. The lobby was classic with twin curving staircases on the left and right leading up to a second floor landing. The wood work is grand.

The Royal Holiday Motel where we stayed advertised free continental breakfast – it’s a lie. Unless you call Cheerios and white bread and a toaster continental breakfast. We passed and headed out before 8am and grabbed a quick bite at McDonald’s in Walmart. I also needed to pick up eye drops and Flonase for pollen allergies which I forgot to pack.

We arrived at the home outside of Cortez right at 11am. Diane, the homeowner gave us a tour and instructions on the care of her two dogs, Charlie and Zuni. The dogs were adorable – well-mannered and a joy to take care of. The property was on four acres in a sparsly populated area northwest of town. The nearest neighbor was a quarter of a mile away. Once we settled in, I set up my telescope.

Telescope under cover on the east side of the property

I had the telescope protected from dust or rain under a cover that also reflects sunlight off of it. I made a couple of changes to my set-up. This isn’t the best way to go – I usually try to only change one thing at a time in case I have problems and need to troubleshoot. If you change multiple pieces in the set-up, it can lead to confusing results. I was using a new camera – a Player One Poseidon C. This has an APS-C size sensor which is larger than what I used previously. I also changed the field flattener from a TS 1.0x to an Astro-Tech 0.8x. The 0.8x means it’s a focal length reducer, resulting in a wider field of view. The wide field along with the larger sensor would allow me to frame my target to best advantage. I was targeting the Eastern Veil Nebula.

I got things rolling after dark and completed the calibration process fairly quickly. Then I had to find focus with the new set-up. I ran into a snag. I couldn’t get a focused image of the stars. I was perplexed and started putting in spacers to increase the back-focus length. I couldn’t get it. I finally discovered the problem was a light leak in the Player One filter drawer creating reflections – another new piece of equipment.

Once I fixed the light leak, I decided it would be easier if I focused on the bright, full moon. Then I could fine-focus on stars. I slewed to the moon and took a test shot. It was so far from focus I was lost again. Then I looked up at the moon. It was obscured by clouds! Clouds had rolled in while I was fiddling with my equipment and I didn’t even notice. I covered the ‘scope and called it a night.

I’ve always said astrophotography teaches you patience. I had to be patient and try again the next night. Friday had partly cloudy skies all day and it was worse after dark. The next lesson I’ve learned from astrophotography is acceptance – accept the things that are out of your control and cannot be changed. So I waited for Saturday night. Clouds again. My telescope never came out from under the cover and I took it down on Sunday night and packed it in the Jeep for Monday’s departure.

View to the northeast from the second story deck

The house had two hummingbird feeders on the upper deck. It also had two bird feeders in the back garden area. I enjoyed sitting on the lower deck area and puffing on a cigar while I used my binoculars to bird watch. With the clear detailed views provided by the binoculars, I could easily distinguish the markings and positively identify a Woodson’s Jay. It was easy to tell it apart from the Pinon Jays that also came to feeders. The sparrows were harder to identify. Not only are there many similar species, there are also many variations of color and to a degree, markings on what is called the same bird. House sparrows are a case in point. I really enjoyed the bird watching.

Donna enjoyed daily morning walks with the dogs. Charlie was super-easy and would approach me wherever I was and put his head on my knee waiting for me to scratch his head and ears. Zuni took a couple of days to warm up to me, but then she would lay at my feet wherever I was sitting.

On Saturday, Donna and I drove into town for the Farmers’ Market. We also went to the grand opening of the Pueblo Seed Company store where Donna purchased a few items.

We departed from Cortez on Monday, September 4th – Labor Day. I anticipated about a six-hour drive time. We retraced our route down US491 through the Navajo Nation to Gallup, then west on I-40 to Holbrook where we exited onto AZ377. I blinked and missed the gas station in Holbrook and decided to continue on to Heber-Overgaard. This went against my grain – I don’t like to run below a quarter tank of fuel, I like to keep about 100-mile reserve. We went below a quarter tank before we reached Heber-Overgaard.

We found a Subway sandwich shop in Heber-Overgaard and I also filled our gas tank there. We gained an hour crossing into Arizona which maintains Mountain Standard Time year-round. We went west on AZ260 toward Payson. The traffic was heavier than usual, due to the holiday long weekend. Donna saw a traffic alert on her phone.

AZ260 goes from four lanes (two in each direction) to two lanes a couple of miles east of Star Valley. This constriction was a choke point that brought traffic to a standstill. We crept along, bumper-to-bumper from there until we made it through Payson. It took two hours to cover about 10 miles! Remember what I said about learning acceptance. I kept my cool as we crept along. Once we were past Payson on Highway 87, I lost my patience along with everyone else as we sped along in excess of 80mph. My six-hour drive turned into nine hours.

A few days ago, I was thinking about how much I enjoyed the bird watching. When I was a kid, my late brother Ricky and I often went bird watching in the woods by Lake Whitehurst in Norfolk, Virginia. We also did it when we lived in Waukeegan, Illinois. I could identify many more birds then than I can remember now.

I also thought about how much photography I used to do. I took a semester of Photography at Palomar College in San Marcos, California in 1981. In the late ’90s, I transitioned to digital photography and invested a lot in camera bodies, lenses and lighting equipment. I did high school sports photography when my daughters were in school and a local paper published many of my photos. I’ve maintained photos on a web host called Pbase.com since then.

My photography gear is long outdated as I’ve only used cell phone pictures for the last decade. I decided to take up the hobby again. When I’m not doing astrophotography at night, I intend to try bird and wildlife photography during the day. After a bit of research, I went for a mirrorless digital camera body from Canon. I had a bit of serendipity. I phoned B&H Photo in New York where I used to buy much of my gear. They had an unadvertised special on the camera and lenses that I wanted. Canon sets a minimum advertised price (MAP) on its retailers. But for B&H’s 50th anniversary, they had a special event called Bild50 and applied additional discounts when I placed my order. I saved $550 over the online price and had free overnight shipping to boot! Now I’m on another learning curve as I wade through the menus on my Canon R7 and try to optimize the set-up.

I’ll close this long post with a couple of dinner plates. First is a pan-seared pork chop with garlic and spices, served with roasted baby potatoes and asparagus.

Next we have Donna’s crab cake served with a corn, tomato, onion and avocado salad.

On the 18th of this month, we’ll be heading out for another house sit. This time we’ll be in San Diego in the neighborhood where I went to junior high and high school – Clairemont. We have a nine-day housesit and I’m looking forward to photographing shore birds at the beach. I won’t take astrophotography gear as we’ll be in the middle of the San Diego metro light-dome.

Tucson Housesit

It’s the last day of May already. Every year, time accelerates and the years fly by. May was an eventful month. We started the month by celebrating our anniversary on Cinco de Mayo at Baja Joe’s. We ended the month by celebrating Donna’s birthday on Memorial Day weekend with dinner at Alessia’s Ristorante Italiano. We love that place!

We had our first housesitting “job” through Trusted Housesitters. We drove down to a home southwest of Tucson, Arizona. It was in a neighborhood of custom homes on large lots south of the area called Tucson Estates. It was a very nice house with a pool and jacuzzi.

The job included taking care of two dogs – one was a big, one-year-old labrador named Rebel and the other a little chihuahua called Lil Bit. The lab was pretty rambunctious, although he would settle down after a bit and would sit on command. We knew that part of the deal was allowing the dogs to sleep with us in the master bedroom, but it was too much for me. So Donna slept with the dogs while I retired to the guest room. The dogs really only required a minimum of care – give them treats, feed them at their scheduled times and clean the yard after them. There was also a tortoise named Diego, but he was still hibernating so we didn’t see him.

We treated the week as a mini-vacation. We dined out for dinner with a friend in Tucson, Kathleen Wessels and her mother Sandy. We had lunch at Tiny’s and another lunch at the Coyote Pause Cafe. We also had a great breakfast at Coyote Pause – we really like that cafe. We enjoyed the Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum one morning, which was less than 10 miles away. The museum is more like a zoo for native animals and botanical garden. We spent about two hours hiking through the property.

View looking east from Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum

Flowering saguaros at Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum

I could add pages of pictures from the museum – but I won’t. I think I’ll back pedal a bit to some earlier events in May. On the second week of May, I made three trips to the Weaver’s Needle Viewpoint to capture images of the Pinwheel Galaxy (M101). I ended up processing 161 sub-exposures for a total integration time of 3 hours 21 minutes.

This galaxy is 25 million light years away from earth. Donna asked me to put a light year into context – she asked me how far is the moon in light years. Well, the moon on average is about 220,000 miles from earth. Light travels 186,000 miles per second, so the moon is less than 1.2 light seconds from earth! The sun is about 8 light minutes from earth.

The interesting thing is, eight days after I completed my image of M101, one of the stars in a spiral arm of the galaxy exploded into a supernova. This was first seen by an amateur astronomer in Japan. The supernova marks the end of life of a star as it explodes into intense heat and light. The bright star can be seen in photos taken after May 19th – although the actual event occurred 25 million years ago. I don’t know how long this star will burn so brightly – it may be weeks or months.

I packed my astronomy gear for the trip to housesit in Tucson. The sky would be dark in the area we were going to. I took my big APM 140-980 telescope.

Gear packed in our Jeep Compass – pay no attention to that bottle of Irish whiskey

I set up my telescope and mount in front of the house. The really nice part was, I only had to remove the telescope and store it, I could leave the mount set up where it was for next four nights.

I wanted to try capturing an image of something new while we were there. I targeted a globular cluster in the constellation Hercules called M13. Globular clusters are gravitationally bound, stable groups of tens of thousands stars. They are a real challenge for newby astrophotographers.

Over three nights, I was able to get 365 usable sub-exposures for a total time of 6 hours five minutes. I’m pleased with the results.

M13 contains over 100,000 stars and is one of the brightest globular clusters in the northern hemisphere. It’s roughly 25 thousand light years away from earth.

I had one maintenance chore at home earlier this month. We cool the Arizona room with a swamp cooler. The cool air circulates to the front of the house providing some moisture and lowers the workload on our air conditioner.

One morning, I realized it wasn’t blowing cold air – it was pulling ambient air from outside. After a quick inspection and a couple of tests, I determined the water pump was shot.

There’s a store that carries swamp coolers and parts about a mile away from Viewpoint. I found a replacement pump for $35 and installed it. But it’s never that easy, is it? While I was connecting the pump to the water distribution pipe, the plastic fitting broke. The threaded portion of the fitting was stuck inside the distribution manifold. After a few attempts with various tools, I managed to extract it. I made another run to the shop and found a replacement fitting.

Water distributor with fitting broken off inside

I put everything back together, and then the drive belt for the squirrel cage fan went kaput! One more trip to the shop for a belt and all is good now. The cooler is blowing cold air and it only cost me $45 in parts and three trips to the shop – about two hours for what should have been less than half an hour total!

Donna made a couple of new chicken dishes. The first is a skillet dish called Chicken Afritada with potatoes, carrots, celery, peas and Castelvetrano olives.

Last night, she made seared Duroc pork chops with a side of calabacitas, which she saw on the menu at Coyote Pause. It was delicious.

The weather down in Tucson was similar to the daytime temperatures here in Mesa. The nights were cooler though. For the month of May, we’ve had highs ranging from the mid-80s to high 90s. We had 100 degrees on just one day. This is cooler than this time last year. The next two weeks are forecast to be more of the same – mid to high 90s for daytime highs with overnight lows in the high 60s. I won’t complain about that!

17 Years and Counting

Today is a Mexican holiday – Cinco de Mayo. The fifth of May has significance for Donna and me – we were married on the shore of Watson Lake at Watson Lake State Park near Prescott, Arizona on May 5, 2006. Seventeen years and seems like it wasn’t that long ago. I haven’t regretted that day for a moment.

By the end of April, things really started winding down here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort. Most of the visitors from Canada are gone. Snowbirds from the northern states have left or will be leaving soon. There are only enough pickleballers now to have three or four games going at a time.

In April, Donna was away for a week as she traveled back to Vermont to visit her parents. It was just me and Ozark fending for ourselves. Donna planted lots of flowers and also has the vegetable garden which needed tending. She worried about finding dead or dying plants when she returned. Not to worry – I kept everything alive and thriving.

I mentioned in a previous post that we’re in galaxy season for astronomy now. I went up to the Weaver’s Needle Viewpoint several times to capture a few galaxies. I’m learning how to operate my Losmandy mount – as with all new astronomy equipment, there’s a learning curve. It took me a couple of months to get my previous Sky-Watcher mount working well, it only took a few attempts to get the Losmandy to work properly – there was one software glitch and I had to install new firmware for that. I had a few instances of operator error, but now I have it down to a routine.

The Losmandy handles the AT 115EDT like it’s nothing. That scope had my Sky-Watcher HEQ5 on the limit. Larger refractors can be demanding on mounts. They have longer polar moments of inertia due to the fact that for one thing, they can be long and they carry most of their weight on the ends. The objective lens is heavy with two or three glass elements. On the opposite end of the ‘scope, there is a diagonal with a mirror or prism and an eyepiece for observing or a camera and filter drawer for astrophotography.

My new APM 140/980 is larger than the AT 115EDT. The 115 has an objective lens with a diameter of 115mm, about 4.5 inches. The APM 140/980 has an objective lens with a diameter of 140mm, about 5.5 inches. The 115 is a triplet, meaning it has three elements to the objective lens cell. Three separate elements allow the designer a lot of freedom to correct aberations. The APM is a doublet, two elements in the lens cell. The APM doublet utilizes super-low dispersion glass from Ohara (Japan) called FPL53. This special crystal allows excellent chromatic aberation correction.

APM 140/980 on the Losmandy GM811 mount at Wever’s Needle Viewpoint

I made two trips to the viewpoint in April to image a galaxy called Bode’s Galaxy (M81). Americans tend to pronounce it as boads, but it’s actually named after a German astronomer named Johann Bode who discovered it in 1774. Germans pronounce words that end in “e” with an “ah” sound, and silent letters are rare in the German language. So it’s really pronounced like “bodahs” galaxy. It’s in the constellation Ursa Major (Greater Bear). It’s relatively close to our galaxy at 12 million light years from here. It’s a popular target for astrophotography due to its large size and brightness.

You might have noticed that I often put an alpha-numeric tag with the images. These are catalog numbers for celestial objects. The “M” numbers are from a catalog created by a French astronomer named Charles Messier. The objects he cataloged all have a “Messier” or “M” number. He published his catalog of 110 objects in 1774. There are other catalogs like the NGC (New General Catalog).

After imaging Bode’s Galaxy, I made three trips back to capture the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51). The Whirlpool Galaxy is listed as 31 million light years from earth on the NASA website although Wikipedia says it’s 23 million light years away. I believe NASA before I’ll quote an anonymous Wikipedia post. The Whirlpool Galaxy is in the constellation Canes Venatici (Hunting Dogs). I had a total of 177 exposures which stacked for a total integration time of nearly four hours. This much data allowed a nice image with good detail and some color.

The bright ball of light that appears to be hanging from one of the Whirlpool’s spiral arms is another galaxy slightly farther away called NGC5195. If you look closely, you can see a small vertical edge-on galaxy far away above and to the right of NGC5195. There’s another edge-on galaxy in the lower-left corner of the photo.

While Donna was away, my diet suffered as I didn’t put a lot of effort into cooking. Donna feeds me well when she’s here and I’m spoiled. Here are a few plates. First we have our Easter dinner of spiral ham, roasted cauliflower with parmesan-panko crumble and green beans with sliced almonds.

Next, we have a new recipe that was quick and easy to prepare – ginger-garlic shrimp with coconut milk.

Then we have another new recipe for shoyu chicken with a soy ginger-garlic sauce.

Tonight we’ll have our traditional anniversary dinner – Mexican food at Baja Joe’s where they specialize in Sinaloa seafood.

The weather has been pleasant after a short warm spell. The last week has had highs between the low 80s and low 90s. The forecast calls for more of the same for the next couple of weeks. On the 22nd, we’ll head down to Tucson for a housesitting assignment. It’s a dark-sky area and I look forward to setting up my telescope there.

Flying The Koop

…from real estate to wheel estate and back again

Category Archives: Astronomy

Fourth and Final Housesit

Stoned

Hearts and Roses

Gucci USB

Good Neighbors

Doublets and Triplets

Cigars and Stars

Cortez Housesit

Tucson Housesit

17 Years and Counting

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