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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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