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
Black bear at the 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.

Pinwheel Galaxy (M101)

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.

Telescope set-up in Tucson

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.

Globular Cluster M13

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.

Swamp cooler water pump

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.

Skillet chicken dinner

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.

Bode’s Galaxy (M81)

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.

Whirlpool Galaxy (M51)

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.

Special Deliveries

It’s that time of year again. No, I’m not talking about April Fools’ Day – although today is the day for gags. I’m talking about spring, which for me means allergies. A couple of weeks ago the citrus trees here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort were blooming. The fragrance of the orange tree in front of our place was pleasant, but it made my eyes itch and water.

Now, everything is flowering. I saw a photo on Facebook this morning posted by our friend, Dave Hobden, of the cactus in his yard blooming. I’ve been taking allergy medicine daily this week. I’m also recovering from another visit to the dermatologist.

I had a few pre-cancer keratosis spots taken care of and a biopsy of a spot near my right eye. This turned out to be squamous cell carcinoma. Last Tuesday I had Mohs surgery to remove the lesion. It turned out to be about a five-hour affair. It didn’t take long for the surgeon to cut away the tissue. The tissue removed has to be examined by a pathologist to ensure that a clear margin is evident. If there’s no clear margin, they make another cut.

In my case, there was a hold-up on the pathology results. Instead of the hour to hour and half I was told to expect, it took two and half hours to get the report. It was clear, so they took me back into an exam room to have the incision closed up. There was another delay as the surgeon had to finish up another surgery first. It was another hour of waiting in small exam room. Good thing I brought my Kindle. I’ll go back to the dermatologist office on Tuesday morning for follow-up and have the stitches removed.

I mentioned our visit with my youngest daughter, Shauna, and her family in my last post. I also mentioned plans to go out for sushi with my oldest daughter, Alana, and her husband, Kevin. It turned out that my middle daughter, Jamie, and her partner, Francisco, were able to join us as well. We had a great evening. It was nice to visit with all three of my daughters that week.

The two weeks since my last post have been fairly routine. The Viewpoint Concert Band had their final performance of the season on Sunday, March 19th. They had a good crowd in the ballroom and most of the people we talked to afterward said they thought it was the best performance they had heard from the band. I think the selection of the music performed was the reason for all of the positive feedback.

Now that the last band concert of the season is behind her, Donna’s schedule has freed up about 10 hours per week. That’s how much time she devoted to practice on her own and rehearsals with the band. But she doesn’t often operate with free time on her calendar. Not only is she president of the board for the band, she’s now secretary of the Viewpoint Tennis Club. Her golf league ended their season, but she’s maintaining a standing tee-time with friends on Tuesday mornings. She’s also putting more time into gardening.

We had our outreach event with the East Valley Astronomy Club (EVAC) here on March 22nd. I arranged the event with one of the EVAC activity coordinators, Claude, and the events director here at Viewpoint. The topsy-turvy weather we’ve had this winter didn’t exactly cooperate. We had rain in the morning and some clouds lingered in the afternoon/evening. Temperatures were on the cool side – the high was only 61 and it dropped into the low 50s after sunset. We had a fairly good turn-out in spite of the conditions. We had five club members set up their gear and I’m guessing about 40 people came out to see planets and stars. I’m not really sure of the number of people – I was busy and only saw those that came by my rig.

Last Saturday, FedEx dropped off four boxes for me. They came from Hollywood General Machining – it was my new Losmandy GM811 mount!

I got busy and had it assembled in no time.

Astro-Tech AT115EDT on Losmandy mount

This mount has a much higher payload capacity than my SkyWatcher HEQ5 had. There’s nothing wrong with the HEQ5, but I wanted the higher capacity for the AT115EDT, which put the HEQ5 at its limit. With GM811, I can go much larger with my astrophotography gear without straining the mount. It’s also easier to disassemble and move the GM811 and it sets up quickly. I’m pretty excited by the new mount. My HEQ5 was sold to my astronomy buddy, Marty, and he was excited enough to pick it up Saturday afternoon.

A week ago Friday, I started imaging another nebula called the Tadpoles Nebula. I wanted to capture more data before finalizing the image. I planned to continue shooting it from the backyard with my new mount, but I had a problem. I ordered an iPolar scope with the mount to use for polar alignment. Polar alignment is the first step for calibrating a German Equatorial Mount. I had to wait until Monday to contact Losmandy about the missing optional equipment. They sent it out with an apology Monday afternoon.

I tried to attain polar alignment with software to start calibrating, but I wasn’t sucessful Tuesday night. I think I know where I went wrong, but cloudy nights have prevented me from trying again. I was hoping to have the iPolar scope by now, but hit anothe snag. It was addressed improperly – they labeled it 870 E University Drive instead of 8700 E University Drive. It was sent back to California and they will re-label it and send it back to me. Meanwhile, I’m planning to try the software-based polar alignment again tonight, so I can finish capturing the nebula.

When I came home from the dermatologist on Tuesday, I found a package from Germany that UPS dropped off. It came from Markus Ludes at APM Telescopes in Sulzbach, Germany. I ordered an APM Super ED 140/980 refractor. This is a large refractor with an objective lens diameter of 140mm (5.5 inches) and a focal length of 980mm (38.6 inches). The focal ratio therefore is F/7 – focal ratio is the focal length divided by the aperture diameter and is used to determine certain lens characteristics by photographers.

Package from Germany
APM Super ED 140/980 – tape measure for reference
APM Super ED 140/980 stored on top of kitchen cabinet – this thing is a monster of a ‘scope

Although I had to deal with exchange rates, import duty and customs broker fees, it was about $200 cheaper for me to import the ‘scope from Germany than to buy from the US distributor. I also ordered an APM-Riccardi field flattener with the ‘scope. This is an accessory that’s only used for astrophotography – it’s not needed for visual use. I have high-quality field flatteners on all three of my refractors. This one, designed by Massimo Riccardi is very highly regarded. It’s attached to rear of the ‘scope in the photos above.

I wouldn’t have considered this telescope if I didn’t have the Losmandy mount. It would overload my old mount. The mount is probably the most important piece of astronomy equipment, especially for astrophotography. It’s the foundation for everything else.

All of the activities are winding down here at Viewpoint. The snowbirds are due to migrate back north. Many of the Canadian visitors have already left. By the end of this month, at least 60% of the residents will have gone. It’s too bad, because the weather forecast is finally looking good. Other than a couple of days under 70 degrees, we should be in the upper 70s to mid-80s for the rest of the month.

Irish for a Day

We’ve come through one of the coldest, wettest winters in memory here in Arizona. Donna’s vegetable garden seemed almost dormant at times as the vegetables endured cold nights. Things finally took off near the end of February and she harvested earlier this month.

Snow on the Superstition Mountains, March 2nd

She replanted for her second crop, which we expect will grow much faster as we are enjoying warmer weather and longer days.

Donna’s second planting in her raised vegetable garden bed

She relocated the worm bin when she replanted. The worms are thriving and continue to multiply. The same goes for my second worm colony.

The highlight of the year came on Wednesday, March 15th, when my youngest daughter, Shauna and her husband Gabe came to visit from Bermuda. Of course they had our youngest granddaughter Petra in tow. We picked them up at the airport and they visited while we had snacks and a drink. We met our granddaughter for the first time. We hadn’t visited Bermuda since the COVID lockdown.

Later, I dropped them off at a nearby AirBnb. On Thursday morning, I picked them up again and we drove to west Mesa where Shauna had rented a car through Turo. She picked up a new VW Taos compact SUV. She said the car felt big to her – Bermuda doesn’t have many (any?) full-size cars. Everything is sub-compact there. It’s an island after all with narrow roads.

We came back to Viewpoint and gave them a tour of the grounds. We finished the tour at Fat Willy’s where we enjoyed lunch on the patio. Lucky for us, we claimed a table next to a propane heater – it was a bit chilly with the breeze. I mentioned the unusually cool weather – when they arrived on Wednesday, it was raining and we had a high of just 65 degrees. Thursday was only slightly warmer with a high of 69 degrees.

Donna, Petra and me by the golf course behind Fat Willy’s

Thursday afternoon, they headed west to visit with Shauna’s mother and stepfather in Wickenburg. My oldest daughter Alana and her husband Kevin were already there. They flew down from Washington to meet up with Shauna and Gabe.

Alana and Kevin will come here this afternoon and we’re planning to go out for sushi tonight. Shauna and family will come back to Scottsdale on Monday. They’re meeting friends and will attend a spring training MLB game Monday night. Donna and I will babysit Petra while they’re at the game.

I need to shift gears now and discuss my latest passion – astronomy and, more specifically, astrophotography. When the astronomy bug bit, I spent the first month or so looking at the moon and planets visually through my telescope. Then I decided I wanted to capture the images, not just gaze through an eyepiece. I started with the easiest target – the moon. Then I spent about three months working on Jupiter and Saturn.

Once I had the planetary imaging techniques figured out, I wanted to try my hand at deep sky objects (DSO). I don’t mean to imply that I mastered planetary imaging – far from it. But here’s the thing. Astronomy has seasons – who knew? We are past the optimum time for imaging planets now. The moon is available year ’round except for about a week or so out of every four weeks when it crosses the sky during daylight hours.

The winter is the time of year when nebula imaging hits its stride. Nebulae generally are invisible to the naked eye, but if you know where to point your telescope, they can be found and images can be recorded. The difficulty arises from the distance involved and the dim light they produce.

Our eyes see in real time – that is, whatever photons strike the rods and cones in our eyes are immediately transferred to our brain. A sensor in a digital camera can be used that way or it can be exposed to a particular light source for a longer time and accumulate the light photons, gradually making the resultant image brighter up to a point. It gets tricky when we are talking about deep sky objects that have a wide spectrum of colors and brightness.

Keeping the camera sensor on point for long periods of time requires accurate tracking. The earth is in constant motion. As it rotates, the celestial bodies appear to move across the sky. Modern astrophotography utilizes powerful software and carefully designed telescope mounts to track the object we want to capture.

There’s also the fact that the earth revolves around the sun. Remember, I said astronomy has seasons? That’s why. As the earth reaches different points in the elliptical path around the sun, different parts of our solar system and the universe are in view. The second quarter of the year is known as galaxy season. The earth reaches a point where most of the Milky Way is no longer visible in the night sky, opening up paths to distant galaxies. The summer is planet season. Then we return to nebula time.

Astrophotography, especially DSO astrophotography, is a very difficult hobby. It’s probably one of the most challenging hobbies I’ve encountered. Having said that, I love it. I’m learning so much. There are so many decisions regarding gear, software and which objects to target. There are no absolutes – that is, there’s more than one way to approach the hobby. An inexperienced amateur astronomer will require a few years to really grasp what they need and what works best for them.

My gear is evolving and I found that I need different software for DSO than what I needed for planetary imaging. Like I said, there’s much to learn. I’ve taken up the DSO challenge and I’ve captured a few objects. My first was late in January when I shot an image of the Andromeda Galaxy. In hindsight, it was a marginal effort. I then went after the Pleiades star cluster. I made some improvements there after a few attempts.

At the end of February I tried to capture the Orion Nebula and was moderately successful.

Orion Nebula

This led me to the Horsehead Nebula.

Horsehead Nebula

My final version of the Horsehead came from two sessions. First on March 3rd, I captured 46 sub-exposures of 120 seconds each from our backyard here at Viewpoint. Then, on March 12th, I captured another 44 subs of of 90 seconds each from darker skies at the Weaver’s Needle Viewpoint. I learned how to combine the data collected from the two sessions in AstroPixelProcessor and the result is the image above.

My latest attempt came from our backyard and it’s the Rosette Nebula.

Rosette Nebula

The Rosette Nebula is 5,200 light years away from earth. It’s in the constellation Orion as are the Horsehead and of course the Orion Nebula.

I’ve arranged an outreach event next week for our astronomy club, East Valley Astronomy Club, here at Viewpoint. Members of the club will show up on Wednesday evening and I’ve secured permission to set up on the ball field at the north end of the Viewpoint complex. We’re inviting people to come out and look at the sky through our telescopes.

Yesterday was St. Patrick’s Day. Of course, everyone in the park was Irish for a day. I cleaned up Midget-San – it’s amazing how much dust finds its way under the car cover. I’ve had its battery on a float charger and the gas in the tank was stabilized, so I was confident about it running after spending many months stored on jack stands.

It fired up without any issues! We joined the St. Patrick’s Day parade in it. Donna threw candy to the people lining the streets of Viewpoint and made sure she found kids to toss the candy to. It was fun.

Lining up for the parade
Donna talking with a neighbor, getting ready to join the parade in Midget-San

There was a car show after the parade. I didn’t enter Midget-San because I didn’t want to commit to hanging around all day. I’ve done the car show thing with my old Corvettes in the past and I’m not up to entering anymore. But I like to look around!

Last night, our friends Chuck and Sue Lines came over and joined us for happy hour and dinner. Donna made her usual traditional St. Patrick’s Day dinner of corned beef, cabbage and carrots, champ potatoes and Irish soda bread. And Sue brought a grasshopper pie she made. We had a great time – good food and conversation with good friends. It doesn’t get any better.

As always, Donna keeps fresh cooked, nutritious, delicious meals on our dinner table. Here are few examples from the last couple of weeks. I’ll start with a batch of grilled chicken with tomatoes and corn.

Grilled chicken with tomatoes and corn

For another meal, she prepared braised chicken thighs and peppers over creamy polenta.

Braised chick thighs and peppers over creamy polenta

The next dish was very tasty. It’s garlic butter flank steak pan fried with baby potatoes and fresh herbs. Yummy!

Flank steak with baby potatoes and broccoli on the side

The weather has been much better in the last week, but it looks like we might have a wet, cold snap for a couple of days next week. I hope Wednesday is fair for the event with the astronomy club.

Backyard Bounty

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cloudy skies can make a spectacular sunset

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

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

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

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

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

Orion Nebula – Messier catalog number M42

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

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

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

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

Japanese curry chicken

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

Another chicken favorite was this chicken marsala plate.

Chicken marsala with broccoli and fresh bread

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

Citrus skillet shrimp

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

Fennel crusted rack of lamb

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

Weaver’s Needle Viewpoint – Revisited

My last post neglected to mention Donna’s performance with the Viewpoint Concert Band. They had their January concert – the second of the season. The February concert will happen next Saturday afternoon. Donna is no longer the “new girl” on clarinet. There are a couple of musicians behind her now in the clarinet section. She’s also a board member for the band.

Donna’s raised garden bed is producing some fine veggies for us. Some of the broccoli bolted, but we’ll be able to harvest plenty. We have lots of fresh, yummy tomatoes. She’s thinking about her next round of plants now. The worm bins are thriving and I’m ready to start harvesting worm castings.

Tomatoes ripening

My astrophotography efforts are really improving at a rapid rate. Donna figures I spend about 50 hours per week studying – that might be an over-estimation, but there’s much to learn. I’ve made a few more trips up to the Weaver’s Needle Viewpoint to set up in darker skies. Light pollution puts a real damper on astrophotography efforts. It’s not impossible to capture good images from the city, but it’s a lot harder.

I took advantage of the darker skies at the Weaver’s Needle Viewpoint. It’s less than half an hour away from home, but it’s much darker. There is a scale for rating light pollution called the Bortle scale. It’s numbered from one to nine. Nine would be looking up from the center of a large metropolis with tons of artificial light. A Bortle one area would be absolute wilderness with no artificial light. Our home at Viewpoint is a Bortle seven area, while Weaver’s Needle Viewpoint is a Bortle five. I captured the Andromeda Galaxy again and made a big improvement over my first backyard attempt.

Andromeda Galaxy

Andromeda is is the nearest galaxy to our Milky Way and is about 2.5 million light years away. It’s size is a mind-boggling 220,000 light years in diameter and it’s made up of an estimated trillion stars. The larger, brighter stars in the photo are from our galaxy and are much closer than Andromeda, whose stars appear as dust.

Donna accompanied me on my next trip to the viewpoint. She enjoyed a short hike toward the Needle while I was setting up, before it got dark. After dark the temperature dropped and she was too cold to stay outdoors, even with a blanket. She retreated to the Jeep and read her Kindle. Meanwhile, another astronomer showed up – his name is Marty. We compared notes and went about our business. I targeted the Pleiades star cluster (Seven Sisters or M45).

The first time I tried to capture Pleiades, I was pretty much clueless and approached it like I was imaging a planet. It was a failure.

Failed attempt at Pleiades – no color or nebulosity present

I’ve learned much and upgraded my equipment – both hardware and software. Deep sky objects cannot be captured with the same techniques used for planets. DSO requires accurate guiding to stay precisely on target during long exposures. My guiding software showed more error than I liked on the declination axis. I researched and learned how to tighten up the backlash in the geartrain and I made it better. I think the factory errs on the side of looseness to prevent any chance of binding.

ShyWatcher HEQ5 gearsets

Last Wednesday, I took another try at Pleiades and made a huge improvement.

Pleiades with nebulosity

You might find the term nebulosity unfamiliar. It’s derived from nebula (nebulae is plural). It’s an astronomy term for areas of space that emit or reflect light. They can be made up of gases, dust particles, ice crystals or any combination of these. They are precursers to star formation. Pleiades is about 440 light years away from earth.

In my last post, I mentioned the telescope mount is the most important piece of equipment – it’s more critical than even the telescope used. A poorly made or overloaded mount is a disaster that only leads to frustration and heartache. I learned this the hard way with my first gear purchase. Then I upgraded to a SkyWatcher HEQ5 German Equatorial Mount (GEM). I’ve been capturing deep sky images with my William Optics Z73 telescope and ZWO ASI533 cooled camera. This rig weighs about 10 pounds.

The HEQ5 mount is rated by Skywatcher at 30 pounds capacity. Most experienced astronomers say that is a stretch – okay for visual use, but for DSO images you shouldn’t exceed 20 pounds, 15 pounds is better. My AstroTech At115EDT with camera gear and guidescope push that limit.

So, I dove into the deep end again. I ordered a Losmandy GM811 GEM. It has a 50-pound capacity. Losmandy products are made in Burbank, California and are not mass produced like the Asian-sourced mounts that are most popular (due to price/value considerations). Scott Losmandy is the owner of the company and he, along with another technician or two build each mount by hand. I read that his company consists of five or six employees. They machine their own parts and assemble everything. It will take five or six weeks for my mount to be built – he always has a backlog of orders.

Scott is an avid astronomer and a retrograde lover of all things mechanical. He has a collection of old mechanical devices and he admires the ingenuity and quality of things built in the “old days”. He applies this thinking into the mounts he builds – no plastic, no castings – everything is machined from aluminum, brass or steel alloys. He does employ modern software for automated functions of the mount. His electronics and software are developed by a couple of guys in Germany.

Marty, the astronomer I met at Weaver’s Needle Viewpoint will buy my Skywatcher HEQ5 when my Losmandy mount arrives. Everyone will be happy!

Donna and I booked an AirBNB for two nights in May. It’s outside of Tucson and they have an observatory! They are good with me bringing my astrophotography gear to set up on their property. I’m looking forward to it.

Donna came up with a super idea for summer getaways when the valley heats up. She signed us up with Trusted Housesitters. It’s a website that lists housesitting opportunities. They charge an annual membership fee of $129 to background check and vet people for housesitting. They list houses for members looking for a housesitter and Donna peruses the listings to see what might be a fit for us. The people listing the house can look at our background from the bio we posted and decide if we would meet their needs.

Most of the time something like walking, feeding and caring for pets is involved. We don’t derive any income from it, but we have a free home to stay in and we can pick and choose where and when we want to do it. We just agreed to house sit in Prescott, Arizona in late June. Prescott will be much cooler than here in the valley. Additionally, this house is on a 12-acre property about 20 miles from town in a dark sky area. I will be bringing astronomy gear along!

Like most folks, we’ll be parked in front of the TV later today for the Super Bowl. I’m not real excited about it, but I hope it’s a competitive game. The weather has been nice – highs around 70. We should see upper 70s today, but another cold spell is forecast for next week, with warmer temps returning by next weekend.

A Big Step Forward

Daniel commented about the lack of photos in my last post. He was right – to paraphrase a boss I once worked for – “Too many words, not enough graphics.” Okay, here’s a recent photo of Donna’s raised vegetable garden.

Broccoli in the foreground, tomato plant in the back

This is a shot of the worm bin in the raised garden bed. When I feed the worms, I bury the kitchen scraps along with some used coffee grounds, ground egg shells and shredded cardboard. The used coffee filter is there to mark where I last buried the feed – it will eventually break down and be consumed just like the cardboard.

In-garden worm bin

When I fluffed the soil and fed that bin yesterday, every handful of soil had dozens of juvenile worms. I have no doubt the population in this bed exceeds 1,000 worms now and it keeps growing.

I also mentioned the external worm bin I created out of fabric garden pots.

20-gallon fabric garden pot, doubled up and converted to a worm bin

I started with 600 red wigglers in this bin. It’s about five weeks behind the in-garden bin, but I saw several worms yesterday that appeared to be ready to drop cocoons. I think a population explosion is about to erupt in this bin.

Worm habitat in the external bin

Look closely and you can see a few worms lounging on the surface. Worms do not like sunlight – red wigglers usually hang around below the surface to a depth of six to eight inches. In another month or two I expect to start sifting a pound or more of worm casting garden fertilzer from this bin weekly.

I started discussing astrophotography equipment in my last post. Astronomy can be as simple as looking up at night and maybe sketching the constellations – or maybe using binoculars to look at the moon or planets. Once you get a proper telescope, there are many paths you might want to follow. Photographing the night sky can become a long, winding road with many potential potholes and expenses along the way.

Once I went down this rabbit hole, there was no turning back. The sky is the limit when it comes to equipment and costs. It doesn’t have to be super expensive, but be aware – it ain’t gonna be cheap!

The mount for your telescope is arguably the most important piece of equipment. It needs to be very solid, reliable and have the ability to track the apparent movement of the celestial objects. This is not too difficult with the moon or planets – they are large, bright objects and can be followed fairly easily with a simple altitude-azimuth type mount. You may have to make periodic manual corrections after a few minutes of tracking.

If you want to image deep sky objects (DSO) like star clusters, galaxies or nebulae, you need a more sophisticated mount. A German equatorial mount (GEM) is most often used. This type of mount needs to precisely aligned with the celestial pole – north pole in the northern hemisphere. This type of mount tracks in two directions, one called Right Ascension (RA) and the other is Declination. This allows the mount to compensate for the rotation of the earth as it tracks the apparent movement of objects in the sky. Stars appear to “rise” in the east and “set” in the west. In reality, they only appear that way due to the earth’s rotation. Additionally, their position in the sky will be different as the earth revolves around the sun, making seasonal star charts necessary.

I have a SkyWatcher HEQ5 Pro GEM mount. It has two electric stepper motors to adjust RA and declination respectively. It has an onboard control unit to point at objects in the night sky and track them. This works okay – it’s more than good enough for planets and the moon – but it requires some manual correction. It comes with a hand controller to direct the mount. To use this, I fitted my telescopes with a red dot aiming device that I aligned precisely with the telescope. That way, I could easily find the desired object in the red dot non-magnifying lens, then fine tune the telescope position. It’s a big sky up there and it’s easy to get lost trying to find an object through the small field of view of a telescope.

Trying to find and track DSO targets is much more difficult. In the light pollution found in any populated area, many targets cannot be seen with the naked eye. A red dot device is useless if you can’t even see the object. Upgrades are needed.

First, I ditched the hand controller and I bypassed the onboard control unit of my mount. I now control it with a laptop, ASCOM drivers and different software. I have a program called Cartes du Ciel (French for Sky Chart) that I use to find my target. The target coordinates are then imported to a program called NINA (nightime imaging and astronomy – think of the second “N” as an acronym for “and”, like Guns’N’Roses). NINA is my main software and it directs everything else. I set up a sequence in NINA and it connects to Cartes du Ciel, then activates a program called EQMod to control the mount and another program called PHD2 that handles the tracking calculations. Once these programs are properly configured and working together, I can get the ball rolling with a few key strokes.

But, it’s not so simple. Now, instead of a red dot finder, I have a guide scope mounted on the telescope. The guide scope is a mini-telescope, the one I use is an Altair 60mm ‘scope with a focal length of 225mm. I have a ZWO brand ASI120MM mini-camera on it. This ‘scope doesn’t need to be precisely aligned with the main telescope as long as it is rigidly mounted and moves with the main telescope tube with minimal flexure.

The mini-camera is connected to my laptop and PHD2 uses this camera to identifiy stars. I run through a calibration sequence that allows PHD2 to “learn” how to keep a target centered in the frame. This can take up to 30 minutes to complete. Once that calibration is done, I start NINA and it points the telescope to the target I imported from Cartes du Ciel. Once on target, PHD2 identifies up to nine nearby stars and “learns” where in the sky we are pointing. It tracks those stars to keep them in position in the guidescope, thus the main ‘scope stays in proper position to track the target. Through EQMod, it will send tiny pulses of electricity to the mount stepper motors to keep the ‘scope on target. It’s pretty amazing.

Once this is accomplished, NINA starts the imaging process. Deep Sky Objects are very far away and usually faint – if you can see them with the naked eye or even binoculars, they look like cloudy smudges in space. To resolve them into a usable imge, it takes a lot of time to collect enough light photons emitted by the object onto the camera sensor. We need long exposures usually taking anywhere from 30 seconds to 10 minutes or more. This is why precise guiding is necessary. If we don’t remain aligned with the target, the apparent movement of stars across the sky from the earth’s rotation will make the stars turn from pinpoints into streaks across the image.

The next issue that arises with long exposure time is heat generated by the electronic sensor. As it heats up, anomolies start appearing – some hot pixels will develop and white spots can appear in what should be a dark area or color shifts will randomly appear. To avoid this, DSO cameras use thermo-electric cooling (TEC). This is usually done with a Peltier cooling device – it doesn’t use any gases or fluids, it totally electronic. My ZWO ASI533MC Pro camera has this type of cooling and I run it at 10 degrees fahrenheit. NINA monitors the sensor temperature and controls the TEC to maintain that temperature.

Planetary or lunar imaging is so simple by comparison, but it has its challenges as well. It took me about three months of continuous improvement before I had an image of Jupiter that I was satisfied with – it’s my header image for this blog now. I expect DSO to take at least a year before I can start recording useful images.

Friday night was the first time I got everything working as it should – all of the software calibrated and communicated together and the ‘scope found a target I couldn’t even see. I programmed a sequence of 50 exposures at 90 seconds each. In between each exposure, the software did something called dithering. This is where PHD2 moves the telescope a miniscule distance – the image shifts on the camera sensor by a few microns. This small movement allows correction of any hot pixels in the process, as they don’t continuously appear in the exact same spot of every frame. PHD2 then waits several seconds to make sure there’s no residual vibration in the ‘scope from the tiny movement, then it takes the next exposure. Some guys will run their ‘scope all night long to get the maximum amount of exposures to process into an image.

Processing the data acquired through the digital camera sensor requires another suite of software and it’s a whole ‘nother learning experience. I won’t get into that now, as I’m just beginning to learn.

Unfortunately, on Friday night, I wanted to check the status of my Bluetti power supply after a couple of hours. It provides portable power – 120-volt AC for my laptop. 12-volt DC for the ASI533MC cooled camera and several 5-volt DC USB ports. I pressed the wrong button and it cut off power, shutting my camera and USB connections off and killing my session after 23 of the planned 50 frames were shot. I was happy that I had everything working right up that point, but the lack of frames and exposure time meant the resulting image was poor. It lacked color and detail, but I felt like I made a big step forward and it will only get better from this point.

A weak image of the Andromeda Galaxy – 2.5 million light years from earth
Equipment used on Friday

If the forecast holds true, I think I’ll head out on Thursday or Friday to the Weaver’s Needle Viewpoint and try another shot at DSO from a darker area. I think I’ll use my AT 115EDT instead of the WO Z73 telescope. I have quick release mounts on both telescopes so I can switch the guide ‘scope and camera between them instead duplicating equipment.

I’m making progress on another front. It’s been three weeks since my gall bladder surgery and I’ve regained a lot of strength and stamina. The surgeon, Dr. Garner, warned me against doing anything strenuous or heavy lifting for four weeks. He said “Don’t do anything that makes you constrict your core or grunt.” I’m taking heed of that warning. Donna is helping me keep my strength up with her usual delicious, nutricious culinary skills.

Here is a rice bowl with salmon, cabbage, nori, cucumber and avocado drizzled with a sesame marinade as presented.

Sesame salmon bowl

And here it is with everything tossed.

Fresh collard greens from the garden.

Collard greens saute in olive oil with garlic, chicken broth and apple cider vinegar. Served with grilled shrimp with chile and garlic and cheesy grits.

Grilled shrimp, cheesy grits and collard green saute

We’re looking forward to a visit from Alana and Kevin – they’re coming down from Washington next weekend. In March, my daughter Shauna, her husband Gabe and my granddaughter Petra will visit from Bermuda.

Hopefully, next time I’ll have a better DSO image to share.

Edit: After playing around with Astro Pixel Processor I was able to slightly improve the Andromeda image.

Dirt and Sky

My energy levels and activity have been fairly low lately. Recovering from surgery is taking longer than I expected – I guess that’s what happens as you age. A couple of times per day I find myself overcome with fatigue and need a short power nap – but I’m making progress.

Speaking of progress, Donna’s raised garden bed is producing some good looking vegetables. She has tomatoes ripening, broccoli that looks amazing and collard greens along with a nice basil plant. It’s taking a bit longer for the veggies to ripen than we expected – the unusually cold weather has had a hand in that.

While the garden is Donna’s project, I manage the worm farming. We have an in-bed worm bin in the garden. The worm bin has openings in the sides that allow the worms to come and go freely and travel throughout the garden. I feed the worms in the bin, so the majority of them reside there.

The composting worms are red wigglers and they create an ideal soil with organic, natural fertilizer. The worms require a diet of nitrogen-based material – this is derived from kitchen vegetable scraps, peat moss and manure. They also need carbon based nutrients – I provide this by adding shredded cardboard to their bin. That’s right, they convert kitchen waste and cardboard into ideal garden soil. As they consume these waste products, they leave behind worm castings – a polite descriptor for worm poo. It contains beneficial bacteria as well as nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium – the NPK values you see on commercial fertilizers. Worm castings are natural, organic fertilizer that will not burn your garden plants – you can plant in 100% worm castings to great effect!

I started Donna’s in-bed worm bin with 300 red wigglers from Arizona Worm Farm. These worms dispersed – probably because her garden soil had so many nutrients they didn’t need to stay in the bin to feed. I added 300 more worms two weeks later and I feed the bin regularly.

Worm reproduction is interesting. Worms are hermaphrodites – that is they have both male and female reproductive organs. But it still takes two to tango. Once they’ve completed the dance, both participants are fertilized. They each produce cocoons that can hatch two to five worms. So, let’s say that one-third of the original 600 worms have an encounter – that’s 200 worms that will produce cocoons. Let’s say that two worms survive from each cocoon. Our 200 worms just produced 400 offspring. I think this represents a low estimate of the worms’ reproductive activity. For the past few weeks, every time I aerate the worm bin and add food, I find bunches of young worms. I have little doubt that Donna’s garden houses well over 1,000 worms now and the population will continue to grow.

Worm colonies are self regulating – that is, when the population reaches a saturation point where food and space become less than abundant, they slow or stop reproduction. Pretty handy.

Five weeks after I started the in-bed worm bin, I created a separate external worm bin. I used 20-gallon fabric pots called grow bags. I doubled two together for strength, added some garden soil mix, peat moss, perlite and cardboard. I started this bin with 600 red wigglers with the intention of creating a steady supply of worm castings for Donna’s potted plants and whatever else she grows.

Enough about worms – let’s talk astrophotography. When I decided to pursue astronomy last summer, I didn’t really know what I wanted from it. Like many beginners, I figured I should get as large a telescope as I could afford and skip past the beginners’ “toy” telescopes. I’ll have to delve into a few ‘scope dimensions to explain this, but I’ll skip the math equations.

My first scope was a Schmidt-Cassegrain reflector – it’s what’s known as a catadioptic telescope – often shorted to cat or just SCT (Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope). The Celestron NexStar 8SE I bought has a large objective (that’s the front lens opening on a refractor or the mirror size of a reflector type ‘scope) of 8-inches (203mm). It has a focal length of a whopping 2,032mm. Objective diameter and focal length are factors in determining how much magnification the ‘scope can provide.

I had a lot of fun looking at the moon and planets like Saturn and Jupiter. But I also found out that high levels of magnification also means unwanted atmospheric disturbances are also magnified. I soon discovered that I was most interested in taking photographs of the celestial objects rather than observing them through an eyepiece.

I bought a dedicated planetary astrophotography camera and captured a lucky image of Saturn. That really got me excited about astrophotography. I soon learned how lucky that image was. Most of the time, I couldn’t get the moon or planets in sharp enough focus as atmospheric conditions like temperature gradients and higher level winds (jet stream) made the image go in and out of focus.

The moon and planets are bright enough to capture with very short exposures. The trick was to get focused as sharp as possible, then start capturing frames with short exposure times – around 10 milliseconds or so. I would take 3,000 or more frames. Later, I sorted these frames by quality level in a software program, threw out the poor examples lacking detail and combined the best images in a stacking program. This yielded acceptable results, but they were still lacking.

There are a lot of great YouTube videos where experienced astrophotographers offer advice and tutorials. I learned that most of them agreed that starting out with a large, high magnification ‘scope would only lead to frustration. They almost universally agreed that a smaller refractor-type telescope would yield better results and even forgive some beginner errors. This allows far less frustration as you gain experience.

So, I found a small William Optics ZenithStar refractor with a 73mm objective and 430mm focal length. This was a treat for lunar photography, but a little small for planetary use. If you wanted to go past our solar system, it would excel at some nebulae and distant galaxy images – but I was still working on planetary photography.

Then I found my Goldilocks ‘scope – not too big and not so small. I bought an Astro-Tech 115EDT. This has an objective lens diamter of 115mm and a focal length of 805mm. I love this scope and also my W.O. Z73. I’ve become a refractor guy instead of a reflector ‘scope guy.

Here’s how the three ‘scopes fit my needs. The small W.O. Z73 with a focal length of 430mm works for lunar and deep-sky objects (DSO). The Astro-Tech 115EDT with a focal length of 805mm works for lunar and planetary – it will also be useful for DSO. The Celestron 8SE with a focal length of 2032mm is good for planetary and deep sky if the atmospheric conditions allow it.

But wait, there’s more. With the 115 EDT, I can use an accessory called a Barlow that effectively doubles the focal length from 805mm to 1610mm. Barlows have plusses and minuses, but I won’t delve into that here. It gives me enough magnification for great planetary images. With the 8SE, I can use another accessory called a focal reducer that effectively shortens the focal length. I have a 0.63 focal reducer for it that shortens the 2032mm focal length to 1280mm. So I have a lot of options now – focal lengths of 430mm, 805mm, 1280mm, 1610mm and 2032mm. That’s why I have three telescopes – and five focal length options.

A few weeks ago, I went to an area with less light pollution and tried to capture a deep-sky image of the Pleiades – a star cluster also called the Seven Sisters. My planetary experiences were no help here. DSO are a different game and have completely different requirements. Instead of short exposures of only milliseconds, you need long exposures – several minutes for each frame.

These long exposure create new difficulties and requirements to overcome them. Due to the earth constantly rotating, you must be able to accurately track the celestial position of your target. Otherwise, stars would go from pin-points to streaks across the image.

Digital cameras use sensor chips to convert photons of light into electrical impulses that can be recorded as data and later decoded into images. Astrophotography cameras typically use sensors developed by Sony Corporation and they are available in many configurations. My planetary camera uses a small chip size and doesn’t require cooling as the short exposure times don’t create much heat in the chipset. However, it doesn’t work well for long exposures as the chip overheats and creates noise in the image – that is, unwanted artifacts and false color or random white points in an otherwise black portion of the image.

Astrophotography cameras for DSO have cooled sensors. They usually have a thermo-electric (Peltier) cooling system that doesn’t use any liquid or gas cooling medium, it’s strictly electrical. This increases the size and weight of the camera not to mention the cost.

I went for it and bought a cooled DSO camera and a host of other accroutrements to begin DSO imaging. I run the cooling system of my ZWO ASI533MC deep sky astrophotography camera at a temperature of -12 celsius – that’s right, below freezing – it’s about 10 degrees fahrenheit.

This post has become too long-winded, so I’ll continue the DSO journey in another post. I think I’m ready for a nap now.

William Optics Z73 and tracking ‘scope set up for DSO imaging – I’ll go into the set up details in another post

Three Trips Over the Holiday

We’ve had a few activities outside of the daily norm here over the past two months – some good, others not so much. In chronological order, we get to start with the fun stuff.

Donna and I booked a flight out of Mesa Gateway Airport to Spokane, Washington on December 9th. We flew on Allegiant Air – they have a direct flight to and from Spokane out of Mesa, but you’re limited to only a couple of flights scheduled per week. Our best choice was to depart on Friday, December 9th and return on Monday, December 12th. Our reason for heading up to the snowy north country was the graduation of our granddaughter Lainey from Washington State University College of Nursing.

Like her mother, my oldest daughter Alana, Lainey earned her RN-BSN (Bachelor of Science in Nursing) Degree.

Lainey

We picked up the rental car around 3:30pm and it seemed like we should have plenty of time to reach the Cowles Auditorium at Whitworth University for the convocation and pinning of nurses. But wait, this is the snowy north. The roads were treacherous, covered with snow and ice. A light snow was falling and it was dark. I chose an alternate route to avoid the inevitable rush hour traffic on the usual routes into north Spokane.

We had little traffic, but most of what we encountered was understandably moving along slowly. Occasionally, a testosterone-filled driver of a lifted four-wheel drive truck would blast past – disregarding the fact that he couldn’t stop that three-ton mass much quicker than anyone else. We made a shortcut crossing over a residential street from one main thoroughfare to another. Unfortunately, a clueless driver stopped in the middle of this narrow street at the top of a small rise. The car behind it made it worse when he went around her left side, slewed diagonally, stopping to block the rest of the roadway. Luckily, they were able to get the first car to the side of the road after several minutes. I wasn’t about to back down the short hill into a busy street to reroute.

We made it to the commencement and pinning just in time. From there, we drove to the east valley where Alana and her husband, Kevin had rented a large AirBnB home for the weekend. There were enough rooms for everyone, including Kevin’s son Kyle, his mother Donetta, Alana’s mother LuAnn and her husband Jerry and Lainey’s sister Gabi.

The actual WSU Commencement was scheduled for Saturday in Pullman, Washington. We woke to winter storm warnings and possible treacherous driving conditions on the way to Pullman. Lainey gave everyone a free pass and said she’d understand if anyone wanted to forego what was sure to be a two-hour-plus drive in bad conditions for a two-hour ceremony. Donna and I took the pass.

On Saturday night, we went out for a celebratory dinner at Twigs Bistro & Martini Bar. Our party numbered a baker’s dozen – I think we had a table of 13. The dinner was fun and the food was great. Back at the BnB, it was party time. I didn’t take any photos – don’t ask me why. I guess I’m out of the habit of making a record of our activities.

On Sunday morning, everyone packed up to head home. We checked in early at the Hampton Inn on the west side, near the airport. We couldn’t fly home until Monday due to the Allegiant Air schedule. It was worth the extra day to be able to fly out from and into Mesa Gateway. It was hassle-free and only a 15-minute drive from our place AND half the price of flying out of Phoenix Sky Harbor.

The next event was less pleasant. Donna’s parents live in Bennington, Vermont and are in their twilight years. Her mom had medical issues arise that resulted in brief hospital stay. When she came home, they needed assistance. Donna’s sister Sheila flew out for several days, then realized they weren’t ready to cope on their own. So Donna flew to Vermont on December 19th to take over with the intention of returning on Christmas Day.

Her parents’ needs exceeded her expectations and although Donna devoted 24/7 attention, her mom wasn’t improving. She made the decision to extend her stay until New Year’s Day. It was a good thing, because then her dad took a turn for the worse. They are both getting help every day now while Donna and her sisters try to arrange for them to move to assisted living. While Donna was working herself to exhaustion, I had nothing but time on my hands over the holidays.

On Thursday, December 22nd, I packed up my two refractor telescopes, mount and gear and headed up to the Weaver’s Needle Viewpoint and rest area to try my hand at deep-sky astrophotography from a darker, less light-polluted area. I failed miserably. Deep-sky astrophotography is a whole ‘nother world from planetary or lunar imaging. It requires different gear, software and techniques. For the next couple of weeks, the weather deteriorated so I spent the time studying the subject.

During the day, I would read articles and watch YouTube tutorials to try to figure out this hobby. Eventually, I had my ideas on what I needed as far as software and some hardware. I would study by day and in the evening I’d shop online, cocktail in hand. Most of the software I intended to use is available as freeware. However, you can’t do much in the way of hands-on learning with it unless you have the necessary hardware. I started spending money. I won’t go into the hardware details here – that’ll be another subject for another post.

I did buy a dedicated deep-sky astrophotography camera. I also needed a guide scope to accurately stay on target during long-frame exposures. This miniature telescope needs its own camera to track stars. It goes on and on. I took my time deciding on gear. I wanted to buy once, cry once, instead of just buying based on price only to have to upgrade later.

For a guide scope, I settled on the Altair 60mm guide scope with a focal length of 225mm. Again, I’ll go into more detail on this decision in another post. It was only available in England. I placed the order and was happy to see DHL delivered it within a week.

Altair 600mm guide scope with anodized aluminum mounting rings – Mont Blanc pen for scale

The guide scope will ride piggy-back on whichever primary scope I’m using at the time.

Donna returned on New Year’s Day after an uneventful travel day. I’m not sure if she was surprised to find I had added a bunch of new gear. She needed a few days of rest – she had been a 24/7 live-in caretaker for two weeks straight!

The last event I want to relate is somewhat bizarre and very unpleasant. On Sunday, January 8th, I woke up and thought it’s just another day. I had breakfast and coffee as usual and settled in front of the widescreen TV in the Arizona room for the last weekend of the NFL season.

Around 10:30am, I had a bloating sensation in my belly. It wasn’t very comfortable. By noon, my stomach was somewhat distended and I had no appetite. The bloating started to hurt a little. Later, my back ached as well as my lower ribcage and right shoulder. By dinner time, I knew something wasn’t right – it seemed like more than just indigestion.

When I went to bed at 9:30pm, I couldn’t get comfortable. If I lay flat on my back, the pain along my upper abdomen-lower rib cage was unbearable. Donna asked if I thought I needed to go to the ER and I said yes. I don’t take a trip to the ER lightly. My daughter Alana is an ER nurse and I’ve heard so many stories of people abusing the idea of medical emergency.

We went to Banner Baywood hospital which is only a few miles away from here. As I waited to check in, I couldn’t help overhearing the guy ahead of me. He was complaining of a persistent cough. When asked about when this condition started, he said, “About a month ago.” There you go – he’s been coughing for a month and instead of making an appointment to check it out during that time, he decides now it’s an emergency situation. I don’t know anything about his condition or final disposition, but it didn’t seem like a reasonable course of action to me.

After waiting for about 90 minutes – my pain level continuing to increase by the minute – I was called back for an EKG. I told them there was no way I could lie flat on my back without pain management. They made do with me propped up and suffering extreme pain in the upper right quadrant of my abdomen. Then I was sent back to wait some more.

Eventually I was called back to an exam room. A young female PA conducted the exam. She was very competent and quickly zeroed in on a possible gall bladder issue. She ordered an ultrasound and also chest x-ray to rule out other possibilities. Once they had the ultrasound results, things started moving. I was given pain injections while a treatment plan was developed. It’s a bit blurry in my mind, but the way I remember it, they gave me 50mcg of fentanyl before I had the ultrasound. This did nothing to dull the pain. I later read that 50mcg is a minimal dose for someone my size.

Later they switched to dilaudid, then morphine injections. They moved me to 6th floor and scheduled surgery. I met the surgeon, Dr. Garner around 8:30am. He was pushing to get me into the OR ASAP. I was in pre-op a little past 9am and in surgery by 10am. In pre-op, I told the anesthesiologist that transferring me to a supine position on the operating table would be more painful than I could bear. He said, “Don’t worry, I’ll see to it so you won’t feel a thing.” He was right. The next thing I knew, I was waking up in recovery.

Dr. Garner was concerned that an open-type surgery would be required to sucessfully remove my gall bladder, but he told me he would do his best laproscopically first. He managed to succeed. He found what he suspected. The ultrasound revealed a thickening of the perimeter walls of the gall bladder. This indicates infection and possible gangrene. He said the gall bladder had many gall stones and the walls were dangerously gangrenous. He told me that certain infections can create necrosis and gangrene within 24 to 48 hours! I hadn’t had any previous symptoms that I recognized.

In hindsight, I may have had referred pain in my right shoulder and back during pickleball over the past couple of weeks, but who would associate that with gall stones and gall bladder infection? Dr. Garner told me that life-threatening sepsis was a real possibility if the surgery hadn’t taken place in time. I didn’t have any time to spare!

I spent the next two nights at Banner Baywood Hospital. I give the nursing staff a huge thank you! They were awesome – competent and attentive to my needs. Dr. Garner was great as well. The other doctors I have to say weren’t so impressive. They assign what they call a “hospitalist” to each patient. However, my hospitalist was a different doctor each day that spent about 30 seconds looking at my chart, listening to my lungs (which the nurses did several times a day) and then moving on to the next patient. In the old days, we would have what was called an attending physician that was more in-tune with the patients on his rounds. It seemed to me the hospitalist was more concerned in keeping the hospital out of trouble than really taking care of the patient.

I’ve been resting and taking scheduled antibiotics and pain mangement since I returned home on Wednesday, January 11th. They gave me a presciption for oxycodone, but I’ve avoided using it. I haven’t had good experiences with that drug. I’m managing pain with a cocktail of tylenol (500mg) and ibuprofen (2 x 200 mg tablets) every six hours. The tylenol knocks back the pain and combining it with ibuprofen fights inflammation and further relieves pain. I learned this at the hospital and it’s surprisingly effective.

I took the last of the antibiotic today and am gald to put that behind me. I’m still battling bouts of fatigue as I recover and type this – I’m feeling rather dull-witted at the moment. Tomorrow I have a follow-up with Dr. Garner and he’ll remove the drain tube from my abdomen which I’ve had since the surgery. From there, with any luck, I’ll be back up to speed in a couple of weeks.

It’s raining here today and probably will continue through the night. It should clear up by tomorrow afternoon. It has been an unusually wet winter to date – we’re more than a tenth of an inch above normal for the entire month and we’re only halfway through it. It doesn’t look like we’ll see 70 degrees for the remainder of the month, but I can’t complain about high 60s in January.

Disaster Averted

We had a near disaster with this site. For the past month or so, I’ve been receiving notifications several times per day telling me that the site is unresponsive or offline followed by another notification saying the site is back up and running. A couple of weeks ago, I tried to log into the site and kept getting a database error. Donna looked into the site back-ups in WordPress and Jetpack, but the site no longer existed!

Donna did some research and found several other people complaining of the same issues with their sites on our host provider which is Bluehost. She contacted Bluehost every day for three days and got the same response every time – she was told they had server issues and no time frame for resolution of the problem! I thought all was lost.

This morning, Donna found the site back up and running – no explanation for it, but we’re thankful we didn’t lose nine years of archived posts. Actually, I’ve been struggling a bit with thoughts for posts. We aren’t on the road, so I can’t write about new adventures across the country. We’ve settled into life at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort. It seems so ordinary.

Take our basic transportation for example. When we first became full-time Rvers, we had a Kymco scooter for our daily driver. We used it to go shopping and sightseeing. Later we upgraded to a Can-Am Spyder three-wheeled vehicle. It was a fun and sporty ride, but it also had limitations. We followed that with a 1972 MG Midget. Now we had four wheels under us and far fewer limitations. We needed to trailer the Midget behind our motorhome to have a vehicle as we moved about.

Later, we sold the trailer and bought a Nissan Frontier pickup truck which we towed behind the coach. This gave us a reasonably comfortable ride with no concerns over weather conditions – and it was easy to hook up.

Now that we no longer have a need to tow a vehicle, I replaced the truck with a SUV – a Jeep Compass. This feels like a luxury car to us after eight years of compromise with vehicles that would fit our nomadic needs. I like the amenities the Compass offers and I like the styling as well.

My friend, Peter Swingle, posted a picture of a poster that really made me think twice about modern styling. Compact SUVs are ubiquitous and they all look so similar, it seems that automotive styling is dead. Looking at the poster, I had to wonder if the form has followed function to a logical conclusion and there’s no place for innovation, or are we just stuck in a copy cat world. Bicycles come to mind – the bicycle frame settled into a basic format that’s been relatively unchanged for a hundred years – the odd recumbent type here and there notwithstanding.

Not much innovation here – photo from Peter Swingle’s Facebook post

So, we’ve become quite ordinary. We no longer live an extraordinary life on the road with less-than-mainstream transportation. We are right in there among the average American – although we still have the Midget. That leaves me struggling for topics to post about.

That’s not to say we’ve retired to the rocking chair on the patio. We are still very active. Donna plays tennis on a regular basis, she joined the women’s golf league, she plays clarinet in the Viewpoint Concert Band and she volunteers with the Residents of Viewpoint Association. In her spare time, she helps elderly residents and also does some pet-sitting.

I have fewer activities, but stay occupied. I play pickleball several times per week and coach a pickleball clinic every Thursday. My main interest lately has been astronomy and I’ve been on a steep learning curve. It’s hard to start this hobby – there are so many considerations with regard to equipment and deciding what you really want to see. I did some research, but was still woefully unprepared. Many experienced astronomers recommend joining a club and finding a mentor.

I joined the East Valley Astronomy Club, but I’m not all that gregarious and I’m not the type to get too involved with club activities. When I started out, I thought I knew what I wanted. I went for a reflector-type of telescope – a Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope (SCT) to be precise. A SCT passes light through a glass lens at the front called a corrector. The light travels to a primary mirror at the other end of the ‘scope where it’s reflected and aimed at another mirror in the center of the corrector plate back at the front of the ‘scope. This secondary mirror reflects the light again and precisely aims it through a hole in the center of the primary mirror at the back of the ‘scope where it is focused into the eyepiece.

Utilizing this mirror arrangement allows the light path to be “folded,” creating long focal lengths in a compact package. Just right for someone with limited space. While I was researching, I kept reading that aperture is king. The bigger the opening at the objective end of the ‘scope, the more light it can gather and the greater magnification and detail possible. So, I figured if bigger is better, I needed as large a SCT as I could afford. I bought a Celestion NexStar 8 SE. This has an objective diameter of eight inches – 203mm. The effective focal length is 2032mm. Magnification of up to 400x is possible.

I soon realized that my interest wasn’t just in observing the night sky, I wanted to photograph it. Astrophotography brings a new set of equipment considerations and lots of learning. It didn’t take me long to figure out that looking at the planets and stars was one thing, capturing images was something else all together. I learned about atmospheric disturbances and “seeing” conditions. Bigger might be better, but greater magnification also means atmospheric disturbances are magnified as well and most of the time, I couldn’t use the magnification available in the eight-inch SCT.

Then I learned about things like field of view and other things to consider when capturing images of the night sky. I went in the opposite direction and bought a small refractor-type telescope. Refractors are the oldest telescope design and are what most people think of when you say telescope. I found a good deal on a used William Optics Zenithstar 73. This has a 73mm (2-7/8″) objective lens and a focal length of 430mm. It’s lightweight and compact. I found it very easy to operate and perfect for lunar photography. It provides excellent views of the moon, even when it’s full. I learned to love the ease-of-use of refractor telescopes and the clear, high-contrast images this ‘scope provided. But, its short focal length restricts the magnification and getting planetary images wasn’t so great – even if I doubled the native magnification with a 2x barlow lens.

So, I had a big ‘scope – the SCT – and a little ‘scope – the Z73. Then I found my Goldilocks ‘scope. I bought an Astro-Tech AT115EDT refractor. This has a objective diameter of 115mm (4-1/2″) and a focal length of 805mm. With a 2x barlow, I can have a focal length of 1610mm and planetary imaging works well.

Astro-Tech AT115EDT

So, why have three telescopes? They are all different and excel at different things. I think I’m set now. The Z73 with it’s short focal length is great for the moon. The AT115EDT can be used at its native 805mm focal length for great moon close-ups or at 1610mm with a 2x barlow for planets. The SCT can be used at its native 2032mm focal length when conditions allow for planets and star clusters or nebulas or I can use a focal reducer to drop it down to 1280mm. These three ‘scopes cover a lot of possibilities and I think I’ll be using them for years to come. Here are a few of my astrophotography attempts.

37% Waxing Crescent moon – Taken with William Optics Z73 Refractor telescope
Southern Highlands of the Moon – Taken with Astro-Tech AT115EDT

The photo above taken with the AT115EDT shows Mare Nectaris – the smooth dark area in the upper right. Ancient astronomers thought these smooth dark areas were water – thus the name Mare (latin for sea). They are actually large basalt fields from volcanic activity millions of years ago. Near the center of the photo, left of Mare Nectaris, you can see a vertical squiggly line that veers off to the right. This is the Altai Scarp – a mountainous ridge with peaks ranging from 10,000 to 13,000 feet above the surrounding terrain!

Jupiter – taken with Astro-Tech AT115EDT with 2x Barlow Lens – One of Jupiter’s Moons can be seen on the right

I have a long way to go with astrophotography, but it keeps me up at night and out of trouble. I plan to keep learning and progressing with it.

Last month, I had three malignant squamous cell lesions removed from my face and head. The dermatologist was concerned about a number of actinic keratosis (pre-cancer) spots on my head. This is the result of years in the sun, starting very early in life. He felt that developing cancers was inevitable and we’d be playing “Whack-a-mole,” trying to keep ahead of it. He recommended photodynamic therapy (PDT). This involves a chemo treatment that sensitizes the skin to light waves. Then, a concentrated amount of light is focused on the affected area. The result is like a sunburn and for the next several days you have to stay out of the sun while the dead skin cells are sloughed off of the affected area. Once that happens, it’s like you have new, smooth skin instead of the dry, rough actinic keratosis.

I went for it once the areas where he removed the squamous cell cancer healed. It involved a technician “painting” a compound on my head, temples and ears. Then I had to wait for two hours before my head was positioned inside a special light box with blue flourescent lights. I think I was in there for 1,020 seconds – 17 minutes. After a few days of recovery, my dome is smooth again and hopefully no cancers develop.

PDT Blue Flourescent light box

Last Friday, Donna and I flew out of Mesa Gateway Airport to Spokane, Washington. We went there to attend the graduation ceremony for our granddaughter, Lainey. Lainey graduated from Washington State University School of Nursing with a RN-BSN degree. She is following her mother’s footsteps and will work in the ICU at Deaconess Hospital in Spokane. Congrats, Lainey!

While we were there over the weekend, my ex-wife’s niece, Julie, visited. I haven’t seen Julie since she was a little girl. She told me she read this blog and she inspired me to write another post. She gave me what was probably the most positive compliment ever – she said she feels a little smarter after reading this blog! With that, I’ll sign off.