Happy Holidays

Hi All,

I hope your are having a happy holiday season. I am sick as usual, but I did get a wonderful Christmas Gift of slippers from my Mother. I am now eating solid food again and it is glorious, as I am finally getting the hang of eating with this new digestive tract. I think I will try to make some pizza soon with pita bread as a crust.

In the interim I would like to discuss the notion of hobbies. I think that one of the reasons people are so miserable is that they do not have hobbies. Notice I didn't say a hobby, I said hobbies. Hence, since I am going to get a digital SLR anyway. I am going to go ahead and learn how to take pictures and edit them in Photoshop and Lightroom. This is on top of rebuilding my electronics making capacity.

Ultimately I want you guys to stay tuned for some interesting developments in January. I hope to have a line of EQMOD cables for purchase. Along with maybe some serial bulb cables to control Canon camera's via a Serial/USB port.

Old Astrophotography

Hi all,

Its a double update! I was able to find an old flicker account that had all of my "best" astrophotos. These are the result of a misguided attempt to get into the game. It actually starts when I am a little boy...

See, I have always loved astronomy and so when I was little my parents would get me toy telescopes that would immediately break, they would also get me Astronomy magazines. In the back of these magazines you would see full page color advertisements for telescopes, one in particular struck my fancy. It was the LX200 with Magellan II controller, the first fully computerized GOTO telescope.

Fast forward to 2005 when I have finally scraped together enough dough to buy one. I decide to get it and the new Meade DSI II Pro monochrome camera which promises that you can take images in Alt-Az mode. (This is a lie, and never ever believe anyone who claims you can take "excellent" images with a telescope in an Alt-Az configuration.) In my case I hat a brain dump and got the 10" model. The results of a few imaging sessions are now on the astrophotography page of the website. I have tried to give the particulars of each image to the best of my recollection but the last imaging session I had was in the spring of 2007. (I think...)

Beginnings

Hi all,

I am one month out (from surgery) as of today. The funny thing is that things have started to happen. First there was this blog, until now it was a way to keep all of you who were interested updated about my journey and plans and now it has grown to actually planning for expeditions. There are also pages for photography and astrophotography which will hopefully be coming soon.

This week I also spent some time on the weekend playing with some old equipment seeing what if anything still worked. It turns out quite a bit. The interesting thing is that I now have the beginnings of some gear, an old set of Pössil eyepieces (the entire Meade 4000 series) which seem to be in mint condition. On top of that my Meade DSI Pro II mono seems to work, in Windows 8! I was also able to find a working GPS receiver with a USB output.

So it looks like I am on my way with my next imaging setup, but I have learned that the main OTA that I want is going to go up in price as of next year, and so I am wondering if with these next couple of Paychecks I should purchase it. That would be the start of my imaging setup however the danger in that is that I would end up with something that I could not easily test until I have a mound to go look at (and take pictures of?) unfocused stars.

Things will be getting interesting over the next few weeks folks. If you know anyone with $85 an hour who needs computer help let me know. I am also tutoring for $35 if you know anyone who needs it.

P.S. Something that will definitely be happening with my next couple of paychecks will be me fabing a cable for EQMOD.

Problem Solving

Hi all,

You may have noticed a new Pinboard, labeled Perpetual Sleep. As you may or may not know I was diagnosed this summer with sleep apnea, as a result I now need a CPAP machine in order to get a restful night sleep, the two things that are needed to operate a CPAP are distilled water and electricity.

Distilled water is an easy enough problem, as a gallon last me for about a week so two gallons of distilled water will last the length of a typical expedition. (~10-11 days) At home power is not an issue, however out in the wild I need to have a solution that will allow me to sleep for 10-11 days without plugging the battery into the grid. Hence, I have designed a system where the CPAP can run for a day or two without recharging.

It starts with a battery package designed for telescopes. (Hey, when you have a hammer everything looks like a nail.)  This gives me 2 nights of sleep for up-to 11 hours. Now in order to charge it you need a power source, something that outputs 12v at a reasonable amperage to charge a 17AH battery. So basically I want 12v at about 2 amps, which is 24W. Since you can get a 50W solar panel for less than $100 why not get more power than you need.

This gives me a system where I can sleep at night as long as there is not a couple of days without any sunlight. Now I can sleep the question is how are we going to carry along enough food and water to be in the back country for that long.

More generally, the abundance of cheap solar panels is an amazing boon for the end user, as it allows camp sights to be self sustaining, including powering electronics such as laptops and telephones. I hope to have about 400W of solar panels on hand for charging batteries and the like, along with this object which uses a Peltier to turn fire into electricity.

Additions to the Blog

The expedition preparation page now has some prose on there, along with links to some pin boards which might be of interest to people planning to go on expeditions.

Also I have added new recommendations for first scopes, some more reasonable than others. All in all I added reasonable quality GOTO and non-GOTO scopes for the most part 8" is too large for a non-Dobsonian telescope. I personally think that 6" is pushing it, as far as usability is concerned.

ACA and Me (Along with blog updates)

Hi all,

So here it is, part of the reason for my travails at the beginning of the semester was an attempt to keep my health insurance. Now that the Affordable Care Act exchanges are up I have decided to buy health insurance from Blue Cross, Blue Shield of Arizona.  The result being that I hope to no longer be afraid of loosing my job or my status as a student for fear that I will loose my health insurance.

This is a tremendous burden lifted off of me. Now its time to concentrate on moving forward. I have gone back to work which should allow me to begin saving money shortly, right now I am eating less than ten dollars worth of food a day. The next step is to increase my income so I can begin making purchases to go on expeditions. This has led to a couple of site redesigns, the tabs at the top will show my progress as I loose weight. I have even begun walking my dog further when my hands are not frostbitten.

The good news is that my weight is coming down nicely, also at the top you will find links to pinboards as well as expedition planing ideas and guides. Those will be under construction as time goes on. Right now its looking like I will be ready for the Grand Canyon Star Party next fall if I can just put together enough money for the scope and the camping gear.

Speaking of the scope, I have decided to re-purpose my DSI II mono as a guide camera since I don't really feel like paying $300 for one. I have also purchased Photoshop since it was on sale for 50% off, which is a great deal that is still going on, hence if you want Photoshop CC I suggest you get on it right now.

Size doesn't matter

Hi all,

I had my two week post op appointment, and guess what? I am doing so well they advanced my diet, no more full liquids now I am on to mushy proteins!

Now I need to begin by discussing a sensitive subject.

Ladies and Gentlemen I need to talk to you about the sizes of your equatorial
mounts. Now I just went back and corrected some mistakes in my rant about aperture when I came across this monstrosity:

This is the Skywatcher EQ8, and there is some excitement about it, even talk that it will challenge the big boys, i.e. the Paramount ME and the Astrophysics AP1200. To this I say, so what? This thing ways about 110lbs, which means that you will take it out once a year if at all, the same thing goes for the Paramount and the AP1200. This is yet another symptom of the bigger is better mentality, and it is highly correlated with aperture fever. 

If you want a beefy equitorial mount you are sport for choice from the CGE Pro to the LX 850 to the Losmandy HGM Titan, but the question you have to ask is, is a 100lb mount really "portable." Just because it mounts to a tripod does not mean that you can lug it around as much as you want. The only way these mounts are truly useful is if you put them in a dome near your home. 

Its an insidious trend I have noticed, taking ridiculously massive mounts, putting them on tripods and calling them "portable." The EQ8 even has handles on the mount head. If you really want to do astrophotography get yourself a sturdy workhorse like them mount I am going to get:

And yes I changed my mind again, the Gemini II system scares the shit out of me, I think it might be too complex for its own good.