Travel Plans

I haven’t posted in a while – nothing in May. Unbeknownst to me, the site was in trouble. I couldn’t log in and Donna could only open it as an Administrator. It took Bluehost an entire day to get it up and running again! Luckily, it appears all is well now.

Donna has been hard at work with our travel plans – inbetween running her Viewpoint Good Neighbors program and making a trip to Vermont to assist her mom, who is recovering from a hip replacement.

Our first trip of the summer will begin next week. Our granddaughter, Gabi, is graduating from high school in Arlington, Washington. Gabi is the daughter of my eldest daughter, Alana. Donna secured a house-sitting job within a few miles of Kevin and Alana’s place. We’ll fly up there on June 12th, graduation is June 13th and we’ll stay through the weekend and fly back home on the 17th. The house sit should be easy, we just have to care for a cat.

The house sit was fortunate as the hotel prices seem high to me and Kevin and Alana will have a house full of guests. That’s house sit number one. The next house sit will be over the Fourth of July. We’ll be up in Prescott, Arizona from the 2nd of July through the 8th. It looks like a real nice place and I should be able to set up for astrophotography.

Our third house sit will be at the end of August. We’ll travel to San Diego’s east county outside of Alpine, California from August 27th through September 6th. This house sit will involve dogs and sheep and more astrophotography. Sounds interesting.

The big travel event will occur on September 26th when we board a Hawaiian Airlines flight to Tokyo, Japan. We will spend two weeks exploring Japan. I haven’t been there since I was a kid and I’m really looking forward to spending some time kicking around there. We plan to spend the first two or three nights in Tokyo, then keep things loose and travel without a preset plan until we return to Tokyo for our flight back home.

We’ve been playing tennis three or four times per week. We were starting our 90-minute sessions at 7:30am to beat the heat. This week we moved the start time up to 7am as the days are getting warmer. Eventually we’ll have to start at 6:30am as the morning temperatures quickly climb.

Yesterday the Viewpoint management had the palm trees trimmed. This is a little earlier than the last couple of years. They started using a different tree service two years ago and they prune the trees severely – the result is what they call a Hurricane Trim in places like Florida. I’ve read that it can be stressful on the trees here in the desert, but they have bounced back every time and seem to be thriving.

I think this time they were even more severe than in the past. Also, trimming this early doesn’t do the birds any favor. We had at least two bird nests in each of the palms at the rear of our property. One had a young bird in it that was unable to fly and it perished.

Our palm tree after trim – the tree in the right background is home to Lovebirds

I mentioned the Belgian Coticule whetstone in my last post. Now that I’m sharpening straight razors I needed another finer stone to to finish after the coticule. I ordered a type of slate called Imperia La Roccia (ILR). While I was waiting for this stone, my next door neighbor gifted me with an old translucent Arkansas stone. He didn’t remember how long he’s had it. It had very little use and he thought he inherited it from an uncle.

It has the original box and markings on the stone. I’ve been told by whetstone experts that this stone was on the market between 1955 and 1965. Back then, hardware stores stocked fine whetstones. This stone has the Bear trademark which indicates Behr, a division of the Norton Company and it came from Troy, New York. Coincidentally, Donna’s dad worked there in the early to mid-1950s.

I wouldn’t have ordered the ILR if I knew I would soon have a fine translucent Arkansas stone. But, you can’t have too many whetstones! I wrote above that I’m sharpening straight razors (plural). My first straight razor is a modern razor made in Germany by Ralf Aust in 2023. Since then, I’ve found old straight razors on Ebay.

I bid on a German Puma razor from the 1930s. It wasn’t in very good condition when I received it and the scales (handle) were incorrectly fitted. The blade was chipped and needed work. It was a learning experience. I replaced the scales with buffalo horn and repaired the blade. I also figured out that I paid too much for it.

Puma 88 with new scales and refinished blade – I wish I took a before resto picture

I found another listing for a Puma razor in Japan. This one appeared to be in much better shape. I made a low-ball bid and won the razor! It only needed a little clean-up and honing to become shave ready. This one is a 222 and it’s also from the 1930s. I still need to polish the blade, but I’ve shaved with it.

Then I bid on a Wester Bros. German straight razor and was surprised to win again. This one was shave ready right out of the box and it’s a real fine razor. It dates back to the 1920s – that’s right, I’ve shaved with a razor that’s about 100 years old.

If I would have known these old razors were available at a fraction of the price of a modern one, I would have started with these. On the other hand, these old razors involved a bit of learning along the way. Just learning to shave with a straight razor is challenging enough without having to think about its condition.

Summer temperatures have arrived with highs forecasted to be around 110 degrees over the weekend before it cools down to the low 100s. We don’t mind it much, we start our day early then stick with mostly indoor activities once it heats up.

I have a couple of dinner plates before I wrap – actually one is a good ol’ American breakfast. I don’t know why I took this photo, but here it is.

Donna tried something new – a stuffed flank steak. She rolled and tied the meat around a stuffing of fresh oregano and cheeses. The oregano came from her garden.

And the dinner plate.

Stuffed flank steak with pasta marinara and asparagus

Learning to Shave

My last post covered some natural whetstones I bought. I also mentioned the Japanese sujihiki kitchen knife I sharpened with the natural whetstones. I don’t usually pay much attention to the handles on my kitchen knives – I have both Japanese traditional style (called wa in Japanese) and western style handles (called yo in Japanese).

But the handle on my sujihiki kind of bothered me – it felt coarse in my hand and the transition from the ferrule to the wood handle wasn’t smooth. I never liked the plastic ferrule either. I saw a sale notification from Tokushu Knife for replacement wa handles. Tokushu Knife is located in Tennessee and the handles they had on sale are locally made and looked to nice. I ordered an ebony handle with a padauk ferrule.

Tokushu shipped promptly, but the USPS fumbled. Tracking showed the handle leaving the USPS facility in Chattanooga with no further information for a week. Then it showed it at the USPS facility in Memphis. What did they do, walk it to Memphis? A week to progress from Chattanooga to Memphis is ridiculous. It finally arrived here after 10 days or so.

Getting the old handle off wasn’t an easy task. I tried several methods and in the end I had to use a chisel to split it. I found hot melt glue holding the blade tang to the chestnut wood handle. I had tried heating the knife by submerging the handle in boiling water, but apparently the wood insulated the glue and it wouldn’t melt. I didn’t want to overheat the metal.

It took about 30 minutes of filing with needle files to get the fitment of the new handle right. Then I shaved a hot melt glue stick and put the shavings inside the handle opening. I heated the tip of the tang with a kitchen torch – the type you would use to glaze sugar on creme brulee. I held the blade by the spine near the heel – the heat never went past the tang. The blade slid into the hot glue and I let it set for a few minutes. It was a great fit. Everything is aligned and the depth into the handle is just right. Altogether it took a little over an hour – I was thinking it would be a 20-minute job.

I have another kitchen knife story. The dollar is very strong against the Japanese yen right now. My most recent purchase was a nakiri from Japanese Chef Knives. It was made by Teruyasu Fujiwara from pre-laminated Yasuki Shirogami #1 steel and is part of his Nashiji line of knives. I love cutting with it. But, I couldn’t help stepping up to the next level – a Teruyasu Fujiwara Maboroshi Nakiri. I had to order one and wait for it to be made. Teruyasu-san has three levels of knives he hand makes. The entry level is the Nashiji line made from pre-laminated steel.

The next step up is the Maboroshi line. These have the same shirogami core steel, but the stainless cladding over the core steel is hand forge welded by Teruyasu. This means it is repeatedly heated and hammered and this changes the molecular structure of the steel for the better. The pre-laminated steels use the same materials to make a three-layer blank, but they are made by running the sheets of steel through a high pressure roller. This works well, but it can’t match the quality of hand forging.

Very few bladesmiths have the ability to forge weld the hard shirogami core steel to a soft stainless cladding. I can only think of a few. Most Japanese bladesmiths laminate soft iron over the hard core steel, which is easier to do but it negates the advantage of using a stainless steel to cover the corrosion prone core steel.

By ordering direct, I was given the choice of a custom kanji on the left side of the blade. The right side has the Teruyasu usual signature. I asked Ayano at the customer service if he could create a kanji for Koop. Apparently this was a hard concept to create phonetically, so he offered a couple of suggestions. This is what he suggested:

【光峰】: “光” means luminosity or brilliance, and “峰” means a high mountain or peak. This kanji symbolizes that the person is a person who brings brilliance to those around him or her and pursues the heights to which he or she should aspire.

It might be a little over-the-top, but I went with it. After about nine weeks, I received an e-mail telling me the knife was ready to ship. They sent me pictures.

The knife arrived two days later and it was worth it.

I’ve been doing dinner prep for Donna. She comes up with a dish to make and then sets out the ingredients to be cut. I cut the ingredients and usually will place them on a quarter-sheet pan and she can use them as she prepares our meal. She calls me her sous-chef, but I hardly qualify for that title. I think I’m more like an amateur prep cook. Last night I was getting ready to cut potatoes for Donna – she was making potato salad to go with the Memphis-style babyback ribs I had in the Traeger smoker-grill. I asked her how she wanted the potatoes cut. She said “Let me show you.” I handed her the Maboroshi nakiri – she never uses my Japanese kitchen knives – she was amazed at how it split the potato with no effort at all.

While I’m on the subject of sharp, shiny objects, I want to talk about something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. I wrote a post a few years ago about the shaving razor business model where some companies will give you the razor handle to get you on the hook to buy disposable plastic razor cartridges from them. This model took hold back in the 1970s and the marketing machine has convinced us that we need two, three, five or more blades in the razor cartridge to get a decent shave.

I remember the razors my dad and grandpa used – they were called double edge safety razors. No plastic. I’ve read that the EPA estimates over a billion plastic razor cartridges end up in landfills every year in the USA. That’s a lot of plastic bits.

I’ve found there’s a cult-like following for shaving the old-fashioned way with a safety razor or a straight razor – it’s called wet shaving. No more plastic disposable junk – with ever escalating replacement costs. With a safety razor or straight razor, you pay up front a one-time cost for the razor. With a straight razor you need to develop sharpening skills (or send it to a sharpener), but there are vintage straight razors on the market that are 100 years old! With a safety razor you still need blades, but they are ten to twenty cents a piece and they are recyclable metal – no plastic. Again, these razors can last for generations.

There are forums such as Badger and Blade where you can learn how to wet shave and what equipment to buy or avoid. There are also countless YouTube videos. I jumped aboard this train. I went head first and bought a straight razor.

I bought a Ralf Aust 5/8 straight razor. Ralf is a craftsman in Germany running a one-man shop assisted by his wife with the bookkeeping and shipping. The photo didn’t pick up the laser engraving on the blade – it says “Solinger Handarbeit.” This translates as “Handcrafted in Solingen.” The scales (handle) on this model are made from redwood.

I have plenty of sharpening stones and some sharpening skills. A straight razor is different from a kitchen or pocket knife though. The techniques are similar, yet different.

For one thing, razors need to be finished to a higher level of refinement than a knife. Most people prefer a certain level of “toothiness” in a kitchen or pocket knife – unless they’re cutting sushi. A truly razor-sharp edge might not “bite” into a tomato or pepper skin. This toothiness would make a shaving razor very uncomfortable.

So, I needed a finishing stone for my razor. I wanted go natural, so I bought a rectangular Belgian coticule finishing stone with a small bout – called a nagura in sharpening circles.

The Belgian coticule is a whole story by itself – it will have to wait for another post.

You also should have a couple of strops on hand for a straight razor. These used to be common items in barber shops. I now have two hanging strops – one made in Germany from linen and one made in Morocco from cow hide.

Hanging strops – leather on top and linen below

Well, shaving with a straight razor is not straight forward. It’s scary! Putting a razor sharp blade against your face is daunting. It takes skill to successfully shave with it. Acquiring that skill can be a painful experience. After a few bloody experiences, I decided I needed to take baby steps. It was suggested on the forum to start by only shaving the easy parts – your cheeks – until you get a better feel for it.

If you know me, you know I also shave my head. This would be impossible for me to do with a straight razor – what was I thinking? I’d probably cut my ears off!

Well, I really wanted to ditch the disposable cartridge razor. So I ordered a safety razor. That’s a whole ‘nother topic with much to learn – but it’s not nearly the learning curve of a straight razor. I call it my training wheels – I can shave my cheeks with the straight razor, then shift to the safety razor to finish my neck and touch up areas. I can also shave my head with it. High quality safety razor blades can be obtained on the internet for about $10 for 100 blades.

Goodfellas’ Smile Bayonetta safety razor

My safety razor is made in Italy by Goodfellas’ Smile. The model is Bayonetta and it is CNC machined from brass. It’s a little aggressive, I have to be careful shaving my head. But I’m enjoying the process and I understand the reason why guys and gals do this. That’s probably enough about sharp, shiny objects for now – I’ll be revisiting this sub-culture topic.

I only have one dinner plate photo for this post. Not that Donna hasn’t made many photo-worthy dinner plates, I’ve just neglected to photograph them. This is one-pan tortellini with sausage and fennel soup.

Chopping the fennel was interesting – the recipe used all of the parts. I thinly sliced the stalks and bulb, then minced the fronds. It was an excellent dinner!

My last tennis lesson for the season was a couple of weeks ago. We’ve been playing some informal pick-up games. Summer play will begin tomorrow. I played pickleball for a couple of hours yesterday and I think all of the tennis has actually improved some aspects of my pickleball game – I was on fire despite not playing recently while I concentrate on tennis.

The weather has been great. A little on the warm side, but mostly comfortable. We’ve had highs in the upper 70s to 80s. A 90 degree day here and there and more 90s to come. I’m not complaining.

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.

Sticker Shock

I received quite a shock in the mail a couple of weeks ago. It was my insurance renewal notice for our Jeep Compass. The rate for the same coverage on a car that’s a year older and depreciating was more than double – that’s right, my premium was more than double the cost of the previous year.

I talked to my insurance agent about this and she had some shocking stories to tell. The insurance market is in turmoil. She’s been in the business for over 30 years and she’s never experienced a market like the current conditions. She says a number of factors are involved – I think many of these factors were avoidable.

She cited California and New York as major influences in the cost of insurance. California has had huge claims from wildfires and they regulate the cost of insurance. Many companies have quit writing new policies or renewals in California and New York due to over-regulation. When the government doesn’t allow a free market, unintended consequences can rule. Companies leaving the huge California and New York markets has a ripple effect on the rest of us.

Companies that continue to operate in California and New York have to underwrite policies for less than their actuaries calculate. They spread that loss to others – in this case, my current insurance through Progressive raises the cost for everyone else to cover their losses in states like California and New York. In essence, I’m subsidizing California policies.

Another factor we face in Arizona is the double-edged sword of under-insured/uninsured policy requirements. Under-insured/uninsured coverage is a state requirement here. Many of the collision claims here involve uninsured motorists. The flood of illegal immigration puts many unlicensed, uninsured motorists on the road. So, the state requires me to have insurance coverage to account for that. Again, I’m forced to subsidize their lack of responsibility. If your policy is due for renewal soon, be prepared for a cost increase. End of rant.

Awhile back, Donna and I decided to buy whole chickens which I then broke down into eight or 10 pieces. We liked the quality of whole chickens better than the pre-packaged breasts we found in stores. I would break down the chicken and Donna would vacuum seal pieces and freeze them for later consumption. Somehow, over the last year or so we got out of that habit. It bit us when Donna made a dish with pre-packaged chicken breasts that turned out to be dry and stringy. It had nothing to do with her recipe or cooking skill – it was not a good quality product.

So I’m back into the chicken butchery business. I break down a chicken into two breasts and tenders, two thighs, two drumsticks and two wings which I sometimes cut into four pieces. We rediscovered why we were doing this in the past.

To break down the chicken, I use a Japanese knife called a honesuki which is designed precisely for this task. A honesuki was one of the first Japanese knives I bought. I’ve never liked the Misono brand Swedish steel honesuki I bought all that much. It was made in the traditional Japanese way with the blade sharpened to an offset bevel – in this case a 70/30 grind. I couldn’t keep a sharp edge on it and struggled to maintain the 70/30 edge.

I found a good deal on a honesuki made in Sanjo, Japan with a western 50/50 bevel grind. I like Sanjo knives in general. Sanjo is a historic blade- and tool-making district. Many of the bladesmiths there are small operators with one man doing the entire knifemaking process. There is a factory there called Tadafusa which employs a number of blacksmiths and sharpeners, but most of the knife makers there are run by only a few employees or a single person. The honesuki I bought is typical san-mai (literally translates as three-layer) construction where the hard shirogami #2 carbon steel core is sandwiched between layers of softer stainless steel. I broke down two chickens with this blade and it glided right through all of the joints to separate the chicken parts. Love it!

Most of the meal prep work I do for Donna involves cutting vegetables. I bought another Japanese knife from Teruyasu Fujiwara called a nakiri. Nakiris are typically made with a rectangular blade and have a slight belly curvature. They are specifically designed for cutting vegetables and the flat edge profile makes it cut cleanly through a vegetable without leaving what’s called an accordion – that’s when the vegetable isn’t fully separated and the bottom layer of the vegetable stays connected together. It’s annoying.

I keep our kitchen knives sharp by free-hand sharpening on Japanese water stones. These are whetstones that either need to be soaked in water before use or in some case can be used with just a splash of water to lubricate and clean the surface. I have a number of synthetic stones in various grits for this task.

Traditional Japanese stones were mined for centuries and are natural stones. This can lead to another rabbit hole where there are enthusiasts looking for stones with seemingly magical properties. This can lead to an expensive journey through stones which can be collectable as many of the old mines have been shut down for years. Enthusiasts sometimes spend hundreds of dollars for a single stone!

Recently I’ve been hearing about natural stones being mined in Indonesia. There are a couple of groups there trying to open up an export market for these sharpening stones. I watch a couple of YouTube videos describing them. I fell for it and bought an Indonesian natural whetstone. It was inexpensive – they haven’t developed much of a following or market yet, so they are dirt cheap. The stone I bought is hard and fairly fine grain. I used it to finish the edge on my honesuki and also on a Sanjo slicer (called a sujihiki). It left a razor-sharp edge.

You can see this thing is a brick – I think it’s a lifetime whetstone.

I put my knives to good use recently and made my famous Japanese fried rice.

Donna grilled shrimp and served it over a cup of fried rice.

Another recent meal was pork tenderloin served with chipotle maple sauce with garlic smashed potato and fresh broccoli from our garden on the side. That’s a winner!

Another fine dinner was a plate of skillet chicken parmesan served with gnocci and steamed spinach and fresh basil from our garden.

Last night, we had our friends, Chuck and Sue Lines and Dick and Roxy Zarowny over for Donna’s annual St. Patrick’s dinner. We had it a few days early as Donna has a Viewpoint Concert Band performance on Sunday evening. She made all the traditional Irish foods – corned beef, cabbage and carrots, champ potatoes and Irish soda bread. Sue brought an appetizer and Roxy supplied Key lime pie for dessert. I neglected to take any photos as we chatted all evening.

There’s a big project underway here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort. A company called Airebeam has been contracted to install fiber-optic cabling and internet service for the park. In a couple of months we should have access to blazing fast (up to 750Mbps) internet and video streaming – it will be great!

Donna competed in a tennis tournament a couple of weeks ago. I attended as an official scorekeeper – I’m a league scorekeeper for the East Valley Senior Tennis League. The league sanctions competition for seniors from various 55+ parks and neighborhoods in our area. Donna and her tennis partner, Linda Rice, won their first match but were eliminated in a close second-round match two days later.

The weather has been very pleasant over the past couple of weeks with daily highs in the mid-to-upper 70s. We had clouds roll in last night and will have some rain today before the sunshine returns again tomorrow. The rest of the month is forecast to have daily highs back in the mid-to-upper 70s.

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!

San Diego Housesit

My last post mentioned my desire to get back into terrestial photography in addition to my astrophotography hobby. I’m particularly interested in bird and wildlife photography. I put together a modest kit with a Canon R7 camera body and a few lenses – most useful are the 100-400mm zoom and a 600mm prime lens.

I didn’t go all out on professional level Canon “L” glass – the costs are prohibitive. The consumer-grade Canon lens has advantages and disadvantages. The advantages include, obviously, lower cost. They are also compact and lighter weight. The main disadvantage is the smaller maximum aperture, resulting in slower lens speed – meaning they can’t gather as much light as a faster lens. This is a problem in lower light with fast moving subjects. The “L” lens line generally has better autofocus capability and image stabilization. That’s not to say the consumer-grade line up has “bad” autofocus and image stabilization – it’s pretty amazing in fact.

My first bird photo opportunity came right in our backyard – the fifth hole of the Viewpoint Executive nine-hole golf course. There’s an established breeding colony of non-native Lovebirds here. Donna and I found them in a palm tree.

We had a housesit lined up for September 18th through the 27th in San Diego. I knew there would be many opportunities in San DIego for bird photography, especially shore birds. I started practicing my skills before we went there by visiting the Gilbert Riparian Preserve – it’s about 10 miles away from our place at Viewpoint in Mesa.

The riparian preserve is located in east Gilbert on 110 acres of land. Of the 110 acres, 70 are covered by a series of seven ponds (water recharge basins). It’s mostly wooded with several trails throughout the preserve. Many common shore birds such as egrets and herons as well as waterfowl and osprey can be found there. The woods are home to many other species of birds.

While confirming the identity of some birds, I found a curious fact. Some bird names have changed over the years. I remembered Great-tailed grackles as Boat-tail Grackles. I checked my old copy of Peterson’s Field Guide to Western Birds and sure enough, it’s called a Boat-Tail grackle. My new copy of Peterson Field Guide to Birds of Western North America lists the same bird as a Great-Tailed Grackle.

Note the black bill and yellow feet on the Snowy Egret while the Great Egret has the opposite – yellow bill and black feet.

The homeowner in San Diego asked us to arrive there between 3pm and 4pm. We left Mesa, Arizona at 8am to allow plenty of time to make the 400-mile drive to San Diego. I stopped in Yuma, Arizona to fill our gas tank. Regular unleaded gasoline was $4.14/gallon there. Crossing the Colorado River and entering California, the fuel prices were nearly $2/gallon higher!

California gas cash price at Speedway – the prices were rising during our stay

We arrived at our destination in the Clairemont neighborhood right at 3pm. After spending an hour or so getting familiar with the home and Sadie, their German Shepard, we found out the homeowner wasn’t leaving for the airport until 8pm. We drove down to Mission Bay and parked outside of the Mission Bay RV Resort to look around and kill some time. We used to spend the fall here when we were full-time RVers. The place has really changed.

All of the old park model homes have been removed. The clubhouse is still there and now the swimming pool is open to RVers staying in the park. The park is no longer secured – walking and biking paths through the RV park are open to the public. I would be very concerned about theft in the RV park nowadays – it was bad enough when it was all gated and patrolled.

Donna and I hiked around the point defining De Anza Cove and I photographed a few birds.

I found a shorebird I didn’t recognize on the south side of the point and shot a few frames.

I uploaded the image into Google Images and it came back with a match to a Reddish Egret. I did a search and found these are fairly rare in southern California – only three or four are reported each year and fewer are documented with photographs. I contacted the San Diego Audobon Society and they asked for photos. I sent them the files. They got back to me and told me I had mis-identified the bird. It wasn’t a Reddish Egret, it was a Little Blue Heron and they were pretty excited about it. Finding one on the west coast north of Mexico is extremely rare and I had it documented! The coloration of the bill positively identified it – I should have caught that.

The next day, we drove up to La Jolla and walked around the La Jolla Cove. I called it a target-rich environment. There are many bird and mammals that are easily accessible there. Pelicans are ubiquitous.

California Brown Pelican coming in for a water landing

The Children’s Pool area is over-run with sea lions and seals.

The old man presiding over snoozing sea lion pups

This sea lion pup is napping with one eye open

I had plenty of opportunities to practice capturing birds in flight.

Later that evening, we returned to La Jolla after taking care of Sadie, to join Donna’s sister, Sheila and Jeff for dinner and had a nice night. Donna walked Sadie two or three times each day while we were there.

The next morning, I drove to the San Diego River estuary along old Sea World Drive. The lighting conditions each morning were challenging. There was a marine layer overcast – while that provided a diffuse light source with minimal shadows, it also limited the brightness. I found a couple of interesting birds along with more egrets. In hindsight, I wish I would have switched to my 600mm lens, but I stuck with the faster 100-400mm zoom.

As I was loading my gear in the car, I spotted a large raptor in the sky headed in my direction. It landed at the top of a pine tree next to the road. I quickly got my camera out of the car and grabbed a few shots. Right away, I thought “Marsh Hawk.”

Once again, Google Images told me I had it wrong. It was identified as a Northern Harrier. I couldn’t find a Marsh Hawk image. After searching further on the internet, I found the Northern Harriers were formerly called Marsh Hawks! Fooled by another name change.

On Friday afternoon, we met up with my high school buddies, Gary Stemple and John Barrientez at the Riverwalk golf course in Mission Valley. I don’t think I mentioned the house where we were house-sitting was located less than a mile away from Clairemont High School and Marston Junior High where I went to school in the early ’70s.

Gary, Donna and John at Riverwalk golf course

I rode along for the first nine holes, then headed back to attend to Sadie. This was a tough golf course with some long 500 yard+ holes with the San Diego River crossing some fairways. It took them about five hours for 18 holes.

We had a couple of dinners at my old watering hole, Offshore Tavern and Grill where we met up with some of the old crowd and had our favorite dinners of poke and seared ahi. We met up with Mona Sojot one night – it was great to see her again and see how well she’s doing. Donna also met with Sini one night for a walk at Mission Bay and dinner at Offshore.

We played pickleball one afternoon as guests of Sheila and Jeff at the private San Diego Tennis Racquet Club. We played four games and it was enjoyable, although I was a bit rusty. I’ll be giving pickleball lessons over the winter here at Viewpoint again.

We made two more morning hikes to photograph birds. We went to Cabrillo National Monument and drove down to the Point Loma tide pools. I caught a couple of shots of pelicans surfing. That’s what I call it when a pelican glides on the column of air being pushed along as a wave comes ashore. They glide close to the water’s surface for long distances this way.

A squadron of brown pelicans heading my way

Cabrillo Historic lighthouse – viewed from below at the tide pools near the new Point Loma lighthouse

House Sparrow on a pier on Shelter Island

A pelican splashes down after diving 40 feet though the air to capture a fish

Our last birding stop was a morning hike through Tecolote Canyon. I found a few interesting subjects to photograph there.

Mannekin in Tecolote Canyon – non-native but well established in San Diego

I’m working with new (to me) software to “develop” and process my images. It’s different from astrophotography image processing. I’m mainly using a program called DarkTable which is very powerful, but I’m finding it complicated. My images out of the camera aren’t bad, but as my processing skill improves, I expect better results.

We drove home uneventfully on Wednesday, September 27th. We made our usual stop at Dateland and bought date shakes and Donna picked up a few packages of dates. We hit some traffic as we neared Mesa as the evening rush hour was in full swing.

No dinner plates this time. It looks like we’ve finally beat the heat as the forecast is calling for cooler tempertures with the highs in the 80s and 90s for the week ahead.

Flying The Koop

…from real estate to wheel estate and back again

Travel Plans

Learning to Shave

Stoned

Sticker Shock

Hearts and Roses

Gucci USB

Good Neighbors

Doublets and Triplets

Cigars and Stars

San Diego Housesit

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