The Nightwatch

[Boozlefoot]

Originally Posted by glend

I know they are out there, some of you have told me. Under beds, in the shed. Stacked in a corner of the observatory. Still in their original boxes, some have never been out of the box. Come on confession time.

How many, why did you buy them?

14, because "I had to have them."

10" LX850 on MI250 in dome obs.
12" Alt/Az Newt, exterior mount.
10" LX050, spare for dome obs/visitors starhopper.
10" Cave? OTA which I pipemount.
8"RC for solar - CG5GT on outside pier.
6" truss newt - desilvered for lunar
6" refractor - starhopping - assess whether to crank up the dome
125 Mak - for visitors
80mm Unitron spotter for birding
60mm Unitron 114 - because everybody has one
Tasco 7TE - because Unipol is a great salesman (It's lovely)
RA61 - My unicorn and my most precious. "My Precioussss". (Not for sale!)
TAL1 - Close to mint, great for its age.
114 Meade - given to me, now being restored to give to neighbour.

We won't talk about the eyepieces....................

[glend (Glen)]

My daughters family are stuck in Sicily at the moment. Sadly their dream holiday has turned into an ordeal. Temperatures are predicted to hit 48C over the next few days. They are suppose to fly out tomorrow to Greece but the weather there is just as bad.
With three girls age 8 and under, the kids are not coping well.
Complicated by the fact that accommodation providers them out of their apartment in the heat of the day, which will force them to sit at Palermo airport through the heat waiting for their flight to Greece.
Europe is experiencing a real climate emergency.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66212501

[glend (Glen)]

My daughter's family had their flight out of Sicily cancelled.. The scene at the airport bordered on chaos, with a lot of very upset Italians getting very loud and abusive to the airline staff. This left my two youngest granddaughters in tears. The cancellation was due to heat effects on the aircraft and inability to cool it down, as it was like an oven inside. My family had to go back to Palermo and find a hotel that night. The airline made no effort to secure them accommodation. My son-in-law was out at 11pm looking for a place to buy dinner for the girls. No idea what today has brought. I suggested he ring DFAT hotline, as the welfare of the girls was a concern.

[AstroViking (Steve)]

Who else is "on duty" tonight?

It's the first real clear night down here in a month, so I have the scope out and happily capturing photons right now.

Glen - that's a sh*t-show of a situation. I hope your family are able to get out of there OK. Do their circumstances allow them to take a ferry to the Italian mainland and then a train to Rome for a flight home? Not a super practical (and probably highly expensive!) option, sadly.

Regards,
V

[glend (Glen)]

Yes Steve, I am "on duty" staying in touch ith my daughter via What's App. All the options are very expensive, because there are five of them. They managed to get booked for a flight to Rome, then on another flight to Athens arriving at 1am local time. They have to stay in an airport hotel for $600 for one night. Then they think they can get a flight to the Greek island where they have booked accommodation. Net lost so far $5600 to get out of Sicily and on their way. But no confirmation yet that any of that is actually happening. Thry have travel insurance but the climate crisis is an Act of God, apparently mankind had nothing to do with it.

[Nikolas (Nik)]

Catching some photons tonight but on the eq3 mount so it's not the most stable in terms of guiding but much better since the regreasing. At least to morrow mornig get up, unplug then plonk everything indoors before going to work and the rain hits in the afternoon.

[glend (Glen)]

I can finally relax my Euro Climate Crisis watch. My daughters family has made it to Greece after three flights to escape Sicily. The island they are now on is expecting just 36C today, which is balmy by Australian standards. The girls will certainly have a big adventure story for their primary school ftiends.

I have removed my CGX mount from the observatory for maintenance, a check of the belts and adjustment of the drive cogs. It has been an incredible reliable mount thus far and is one of the first of the CGXs imported by Bintel . My early drive mod threads are still here in the archives, and on Cloudy Nighrs, if you care to search for them. Cheers

[xelasnave]

Got in a great night imaging with both the Askar and RASA performing nicely.

I had cleaned the sensor on the OSC on the RASA and was expecting some problems but it behaved thank goodness.

Just now I closed up ( at 3-00 am ) with ice everywhere.

The roof motor had disengaged ( presumably due to the cold warping the roof) but happily it closed easily with a gentle push.

I must be getting soft as I don't ride the mower down there now but drive my little white car and leave the motor running , to take advantage of the heater, after I have shut things off...so I get to warm up a little .. it is warmer back in the van where it is a toasty 5 degrees.

I can't wait to gather up the data a little later and see just how the images turn out....



alex

[glend (Glen)]

Nice to hear that things are working more smoothly for you now Alex.

[xelasnave]

Wow..slept from about 9 pm to 2am ..that shows that I must have been exhausted,...I set up both the Askar and RASA to harvest some photons and went back to the van and passed out watching proceedings on my tablet...when I woke up I thought that was well timed..the scopes will be parked and I will just close up...but when I got down there both scopes had not flipped and everything was shut down...the inverter had shut off presumably because the batteries got low...oh well...and ice on the scopes the chair etc...so start the genny rather than go to bed..ran a 240 volt lead to a spot light that can be a 400 watt heater turned on two fans, threw over the scopes a couple of sheets ( I find they are better to help drying out stuff) and just left the scopes where I found them ..I will send them home in the light of day.

AND of course being so cold the roof had lifted the gears off the track and so I closed it by hand...really lucky that my back is better than it was.

Looking at my remote thermometer in the van it has warmed up in the observatory to minus .2 ...mmm toasty ...and 6 in the van.

Tonight I saw a rabbit, a walaby and a bandicout which was neat..the bandicout was just outside the van..I could see him in the dark better than he could see me I think..but so cute..he was pretty small so young I guess...I am sure it wasn't a big rat.

Oh well it's near time for my meds so that worked out well.

alex

[glend (Glen)]

I am back, from my annual trip to Qld to visit my son's family, and as usual catch the latest sickness the young girls are sharing from their pre-school.
It was eerily quiet returning to my little house by the Lake, after the constant jabbering and activities of the little girls, but at least my health is improving.
I had an interesting stop over in Coffs Harbour on the way back, where I found myself in the middle of some sort of Horse person convention, while staying at the Opal Cove Resort. I have never seen so many folks decked out in RM Williams gear, and frankly smelling of horses. It turns out I stumbled into the venue for the off track social and trade event taking place during the running of the Coffs Cup. The car park was full of Horse floats and big 4WDs. The lobby and restaurants were full of Horse product displays and people with wine glasses giving speeches and promoting books. A different experience.

And now, back in the observatory, I am getting ready for the coming spring, with a good cleanup and reinstall of the refurbished CGX mount on the pier. Some maintenance work to do on the track rollers, and the ceiling insulation.

The rigours and constant intrusion of arthritis, hampers any sort of serious work on cars, house or yard; but does not stop my astronomy -so far, once I get the ED150 back on the mount with my neighbor's help.
Look after yourselves.

[Sunfish (Ray)]

Good to hear your family is out of that. Sounds like a nightmare.

I know what it is like having kids overseas through the pandemic, various floods , riots and random attacks. One feels pretty helpless. With children it would be so much more complex.

Awake at 5 am myself today.

My daughter is on Corsica last week and it is very hot there but luckily no fires. Shame about Sicily . My kids really enjoyed that last year.

Ah, the horse crowd really is a different world. They do keep the paddocks dark and clean and green.

Cheers
Ray

Originally Posted by glend

I can finally relax my Euro Climate Crisis watch. My daughters family has made it to Greece after three flights to escape Sicily. The island they are now on is expecting just 36C today, which is balmy by Australian standards. The girls will certainly have a big adventure story for their primary school ftiends.

I have removed my CGX mount from the observatory for maintenance, a check of the belts and adjustment of the drive cogs. It has been an incredible reliable mount thus far and is one of the first of the CGXs imported by Bintel . My early drive mod threads are still here in the archives, and on Cloudy Nighrs, if you care to search for them. Cheers

[Boozlefoot]

The pending weather front coming has finally gotten me off my backside, the new gearbox for the MI250 installed/tested and the Gemini reset. Tonight's seeing was above average, and made me realise just how spoilt I am to have such a fantastic site, literally at my backdoor. I can only wonder how others persist in their battle with light pollution.

[glend (Glen)]

My recent trip to Brisbane served as another reminder of how fortunate I am to live in a place with a night sky vista. In Brisbane it was pointless to look up at night, even to get your bearings,. I was more likely to see an aircraft, or that very Brissy orange glow that lines the major highways. I realise some people do think they need to live in big cities, and have their justifications for doing so. But if you love the natural world, and seeing the universe we call home, then make your plan to escape.

[glend (Glen)]

Listening to the rain on the roof would normally help me sleep, but the Arthritis mostly picks the night time to create it's misery. Do I get up to take Panadol? It brings to mind the old Huey Lewis song:

https://youtu.be/N6uEMOeDZsA

Here's hoping the night denizens similarly afflicted can get the rest they need.

Several days, and nights of East coast rain are hampering the opening of the observatory for Spring. Wishing clear sky to all.

And just a few more hours of sleep.

[xelasnave]

I can help Glen...keep the Panadol by the bed and a bottle of water...in a little box under the bed..move some guitars...and laying on that garage floor working on that beautiful new car should help....

Me...sleeping great these days... but I can hardley walk cause of the pain in the feet but the good news is it does not effect my driving one bit...life is good...

I had the girls buy me some prawns, mozzarella cheese and puff pastry yesterday so today I am going to invent a prawn and mozzarella pie It should be a healthy dish as I have some baby spinach to add. Hmmmm I don't have a pie dish so I guess they will have to be a pasty shape..a prawn puff pastry ... plus I will make some sausage rolls cause they got me some really nice beef sausages...it really is wonderful that you can buy puff pastry already made as it is just so difficult to make...life is good.

alex

[AstroViking (Steve)]

The rig is up and running, busily testing a new lens for my DSLR - a catadioptric 1000mm monster.

I'd forgotten how difficult manual focusing is, and how slow the DSLR is to transfer images to the laptop. These fancy toys like EAFs and USB3-equipped astro-cams have spoilt me.

It's clear and (for me) very cold outside - heading for a low of 1, 0 or -1, depending on which forecast I look at, so I'm huddled inside trying to stay warm.

Alex - how did the prawn puff pastry cooking go? Did they turn out edible?

Cheers,
V

[xelasnave]

Hi Steve,

The Prawn triangles ended up sortta square but rather delicious.

I have enough ingredients to make heaps more besides a few already frozen...

AND the sausage rolls, because of the great sausages, are the best I have ever made.
So a great and successful day of cooking.

I got maybe five drops of rain which was great because I planted some parsley, mint and a tomato plant before cooking yesterday..it is only a very small patch but nice to have as an interest..right by the ramp into the van so I can give them a glass of water without leaving the ramp...but even at the cost of loss of imaging time some rain would be nice.

alex

[glend (Glen)]

Alex, next time your at a Bunnings store have a look at their drip irrigation parts. Your little veggie garden could be fully automated, and I know you love the tech stuff.
Thanks for the Panadol tip, it was already there next to my water glass. My medical paranoia extends to my small oxygen bottle and my nitrolingual spray. Like the Boy Scout motto says Be prepared.

[xelasnave]

Well I dug a small hole along side the ramp near the stuff I have put in and put all the prawn shells and remains in the bottom with some clippings over that and put the soil back mixed with clippings...prawn remnants are great to grow stuff... and put more parsley in... I get beautiful eggs from the girls and I do like scrambled eggs but with no parsley I don't bother..I can wait for that first serving of great eggs and my own parsley.
AND with the mint I plan to make mint jelly to go on my barbequed lamb leg that I cook on the rotisserie...I always forget to buy it.

AND the tomatoes already has a flower..I only got it on Monday.

Finally got the 80mm working in its outside location... and can control it via my phone in bed as the wifi signal is good and I dont need ethernet.

I had the Askar and RASA going but cloud came over so I shut down and closed the roof covered them up switched off everything and ,locked up but by the time I got back to the 80mm it was clear again so I reset it and let it run...

Heck I have been so involved with stuff I forgot my meds...

alex