For a blog (and a site, for that matter) that is supposed to be dedicated to astronomy, there has been precious little astronomy for the last several months.
Back in January, I removed the NP-101 and put the C-11 back on the mount intending to take some longer focal length images. Several factors interfered.
- Changing Equipment. The effort to re-balance the mount and set-up the whole thing to work with the C-11 instead of the NP-101. Note that the NP-101 set-up was done when I was on an extended vacation between jobs.
- Weather. Our rain came late and in small batches. Not good for investing the time required for a new set-up and getting good images.
- Work. New job, new responsibilities, less time for astronomy. And that winning lottery ticket is still very elusive :-).
- Property Quest. We have been looking at property to be a site for a darker sky site (not really dark as the location has to work as a local “camp” as well as an observatory site) and that has taken significant time.
Enough whining. I have posted some nice shots of Saturn. I have some Jupiter data in the pipeline. The bottom line is that all of these things are about having fun, right?
Funny how things that are supposed to be fun can also involve drudgery-like work. While there are times I like messing aroud for hours with a photo or computer, there are also others when I just want to take the picture or run a program without any hassle. It’s those times that I will sometime turn to the PlayStation and go shoot some bad guys!