What have you been up to lately?

[Ylem]

It's been rather stressful around here with the pending move.

Closing is on 7/7 and we haven't found a new place yet.
So worse case scenario the stuff goes into storage and we stay in a hotel or with family in Montreal West, but that's about 5 hours away from our area of interest.

We do have a 30 day rent back option with the buyers, but we are 12 hours from the intended area.

[DEnc]

After a two year break, I finally got out with my Astro-Physics Mach1 mount, Stellarvue 4” refractor, and SBIG STT-8300 camera. During this long break we moved, worked on our new home, and I figured out how to work through a few challenges associated with using the telescope in this new environment.

It’s colder and wetter here in coastal northern California than where we were further south. I don’t have an observatory so I set up and tear down as needed; and there’s a lot of keyboard time at the scope for photometry and astrometry projects, which I would find tough with 100% humidity and temperatures in the 40’s F.

I purchased a set of outdoor electrical boxes for the power and cable connections to manage the heavy dew, and I set up a MeLE Quieter3Q miniPC to run the mount and camera, which I access with VNC from indoors.

All worked well. I was surprised that the miniPC was hassle free: it runs WIN11, yet managed a bug-free session using SGP, PHD2, PEMPro, and the drivers for the mount, camera, and a digital focuser. I polar aligned without a view of Polaris, using drift alignment—there’s a wall of redwood trees to the north. Recently I cleaned and lubricated the gears of the mount, so in this first session I created a new file to correct the mount’s periodic error. I’m in good shape! The error in polar alignment was 1’, the guiding error was 0.47” total RMS, and the mount’s periodic error was corrected to 1” peak-to-peak.

Soon I’ll get out to a dark site about 90 minutes away, a meadow at 4000’ in the mountain forests east of here.

But now the problem is that I’d be indoors a lot more when setting up at home. I’m inspired by the reports from the visual astronomers on the forum; I think I’ll bundle up and get out with binoculars when the rig doesn’t need attention. This next endeavor is daunting though, I’ll have to research where to begin, and how to go about it in an organized fashion.

[DEnc]

...Closing is on 7/7 and we haven't found a new place yet....

That's a hassle! We sold in 2019 and planned to store our belongings for 6 months at most, then COVID happened....We finally bought a place in March 2022! But it turned out the best for us, we love our new place. Against our realtor's advice we check the market (she warned that we might see something we prefer versus what we got), and over a year later we feel lucky to have landed where we did.

Here's hoping any unplanned detours bring you to the home you want above all others.

[pakarinen]

I’m inspired by the reports from the visual astronomers on the forum; I think I’ll bundle up and get out with binoculars when the rig doesn’t need attention.

.
I've found bino and just naked eye observing to be quite rewarding under dark skies. The second to last time I stayed in Bortle 2-ish, I didn't even use the scope I had brought along.

[Greenman]

Well have you may have noticed I have been scarce since I went off on holiday to Italy. Well, that was a non-event for the DwarfII telescope that travelled with us due to us timing our sojourn at the same time as the worst weather pattern over Italy in 100 years. On the 11 days we saw around 16 hours of sunshine and no usable skies. In fact the weather where we lived outshone Italy for the 2 weeks. Ah, so is the mystery of life...

Upon my return the company I worked part-time for went for a big sales push. Now my character is to push myself to reach or exceed targets, as this is the case I put alot of time in, and resultantly alot of pressure on myself. My retirement and hobbies took a back seat, at least until two weeks ago when I decided to call it a day.

As of this week I am once more fully retired, and I will stay that way. As I approach 68 it is time for me and mine (almost 52 years of work). So I will be more active here once more and I am about to seriously start work on the Dwarf II - weather permitting.

[Graeme1858]

As of this week I am once more fully retired, ...

Glad you're going to be around more Tony. I'm 26 days behind you! My last day is 31st July.

Regards

Graeme

[Star Dad]

Sorry I haven't been around much. I want to go back to 2022. You name it - its been broken. First no internet for 10 weeks. Then the heating system broke and then the house literally froze. Luckily no damage. Took 10 hours to thaw the pipes. Let's see, then the dishwasher decided to over fill and leak. We finally got a contractor to fix our heating system... first one to tell exactly what is wrong with it... and we're installing a completely new heat pump system. Got the quote today $40,000 before rebates. And only 3 months after we first contacted the guy. We can't find anyone to sheetrock our new office... so I'm doing it. I know there's more but thankfully I've forgotten what they were. Had a very successful May doing AP. Learned that I can use the Astroberry/Raspberry pi X window system to control the AP session - much, much easier than doing HTML. The screens are now confined to the width of the laptop (or less) so no more endless horizontal scrolling. Imaging has been been damned near perfect - except for aircraft and satellites (can't avoid those anymore). Now between cloudy weather and the forest fires in Canada, it's been a while since I've been out. Garden is in and we're harvesting a plethora of peas - I might actually freeze some for later on. Got sold the wrong tomato plants. Wanted Romas - which is what they were marked as but they look to be cherry or grape. Tiny little plants with tiny green fruits. Not at all what I wanted - as I freeze them into 1 cup portions for use throughout the year. I do have one volunteer plant in the middle of my beans - so I'm hoping it will produce some fruit. <sigh> maybe I could skip ahead 3 months??? or a year???

[pakarinen]

As of this week I am once more fully retired, ...

Glad you're going to be around more Tony. I'm 26 days behind you! My last day is 31st July.

Seems like every time I drive to the office, I wonder why I'm still doing it.

[Unitron48]

While visiting my Sister in Dayton, Ohio, I visited a couple of museums dedicated to the Wright Brothers. The first offers an opportunity to take a ride in a Wright Flyer replica. Unfortunately the Flyer was in for maintenance .

The second is devoted to preserving their history making lives. If you get to Dayton, check them out.

Dave

[Greenman]

As of this week I am once more fully retired, ...

Glad you're going to be around more Tony. I'm 26 days behind you! My last day is 31st July.

Regards

Graeme

Cheers Graeme, enjoy it when you get there!

[Greenman]

As of this week I am once more fully retired, ...

Glad you're going to be around more Tony. I'm 26 days behind you! My last day is 31st July.

Seems like every time I drive to the office, I wonder why I'm still doing it.

Yep that’s what it gets like, as we age we wonder more about going through the same groundhog days.

[Greenman]

It's been rather stressful around here with the pending move.

Closing is on 7/7 and we haven't found a new place yet.
So worse case scenario the stuff goes into storage and we stay in a hotel or with family in Montreal West, but that's about 5 hours away from our area of interest.

We do have a 30 day rent back option with the buyers, but we are 12 hours from the intended area.

I hope things resolve themselves soon.

[Ylem]

The drama of selling our home here in NC is officially OVER.

It's been a rough ride, the first couple backed out at the last minute, then a month later they put in another bid, then backed out again.

Then they came back in another month and almost backed out this morning.

So we are officially homeless, and it feels good

Driving up to NJ tomorrow to look at places.

[helicon]

Have the pest control guys over today (Orkin) as I have just discovered a wasp nest above the 2nd deck. Basically they are going into a crawl space between the overhang and the third deck by entering some cracks between the 2x6's on the ceiling. Since they are coming in and out all the time they said it probably was a significant to large size nest inside. Oh. joy. Will be here from 10-12 this morning. Hopefully they will be able to get rid of the wasps.

[helicon]

It would be a lot easier if the nest were external like those paper wasps make but we shall see. They are about 3/4" in size and brownish/blackish in color (Not yellowjackets). Hopefully they are not too ornery.

[helicon]

The guys came and left. They had to spray inside the walls and also the upper overhang between decks, necessitating some drilling and suiting up in bee keeping gear. Supposed to take 24 hours for full effect. Apparently the substance they use is slow acting to avoid panic on the part of the insects and less ornery reactions. We shall see. It turns out they were German yellowjackets, quite common here in the forest terrain, just not as colorful as the regular species.

[10538]

Still working a day or two a week. Retired two years ago, yeah right! I’ll probably help out until the end of the year. It’s hard to break old habits. Yes I’m an idiot!

[Ylem]

We put in a full price offer on a house, but apparently in this state the sellers can sit on it as long as they want

Went to the beach to calm my nerves.

[Greenman]

Just added a TP-lInk to my scope; great little router / extender AC750. I can now use 5ghz for transfers in my extension or cottage. Running from an android tablet rather than my battered IPad, that also runs the Dwarf II and there the Android App is an improvement on the IOS. Now if I can get some clear skies… may be a chance tonight fingers crossed.

[SkyHiker]

Just ordered a Raspberry Pi 4b with 8 GB, with case and the basic stuff. The prices are finally back to normal, this one was $130. I need a new one so I can use my ASI2600MM and ASI2600MC simultaneously. I want to build a rig with maybe a different form factor that I can more easily move between scopes because that is the hard part now, with all that gear. I also want to try live stacking for EAA. Not sure if I should use DSS live on my laptop or Astro Stacker Live or ASTAP on the Pi. I also ordered a range extender to get to my obsy. Still taking it easy because of some minor medical issues that keep me from painting the house (as if I needed an excuse for that).