First Astronomical Observations of 2008

Last night I took out my Meade ETX-90EC for the first night of observation in 2008. It had been well over a year since I actually used the telescope and did any observations, but late in December I had downloaded a planetarium simulation software called Stellarium on my Mac and discovered that Mars was very prominent in the early night skies over Montreal where I live. For the following few weeks I waited with impatience to find a clear milder evening to go out a get a glimpse of the planet Mars. So at 9:30PM EST out I went to meet my telescope that had been sitting on the front porch for the better part of an hour getting aclimitzed to the colder weather. This is a process that is required as going out into the cold with a warm closed telescope such as the ETX-90 causes turbulence of the air within the tube and decreases both the clarity and precision of the instrument. Once out on my driveway the first target this evening was to actually be the Orion Nebula as the constellation Orion stood out so well and the fuzzy patch that is the nebula beckoned to be viewed. Using my 26mm Plossl eyepiece I carefully found the nebula in my finder and was greeted, by a rather greyish, fuzzy patch, but it was still quite stunning as I was looking at a stellar nursery that is the Orion nebula. I then looked almost straight up at the ecliptic to find Mars glowing with its reddish hue. After having quite a difficult time trying to lower myself enough to look through the smaller spotter scope I finally found Mars and starting with the already mounted 26mm eyepiece began to observe it with higher and higher magnification. I ended up going up as high as 180X with a 12mm eyepiece on a 2X Barlow multiplier and although the seeing was not great and the focusing was giving me problems I nonetheless could make out some different patches of colour on Mars, this was truly thrilling. Just before I went inside for the evening I decided to try and find the Andromeda galaxy, but by then some wispy high altitude clouds had begun to roll in and I had to pack up my scope. However, I did see the oddest sight as apparently a flock of Geese or similar bird flew silently overhead in the famous delta wing pattern. Once they were out of sight I brought the telescope in and while I waited for the condensation to dry on the lenses I enjoyed a cup of chocolate and contemplated purchasing some additional eyepieces for the ETX.

2007 the year that never blogged...

I honestly cannot believe that I never posted one single Blog entry in 2007. Here it is now 10 days into 2008 and I'm posting my first blog in slightly over a year to my blogger page. OK so what happened? Well, as I had noted in my little blurb about me over on the right hand side of the page, 2007 was to be a year of closing loops. I did just that with many of my projects in and around the house. I cleaned out some things that had been sitting around, sold some stuff on e-bay, deleted some files from my Mac, re-prioritized my goals and starting 10 days ago decided to finally stake a claim on my finances and started using budgeting software which I had not used in probably over a decade. The software I'm using is a freeware title called Buddi and works really well, it is a very simple piece of software, but will fit the bill without a problem. I suppose 2008 will continue being a year that will see me good clean up of some more of my 'junk' and wrap up some things I've been meaning to do. I would also like to get back into some hobbies that have taken a back seat to my home renovations and toward this goal I've signed up for a free set of Piano lessons on the Internet and will also try and take my astronomical telescope out to view the heavens in the next few weeks, weather permitting of course. I'm still taken aback that I did not blog even once during 2007, but I did do extensive journalling on my home computer and also as audio journal entries using a digital recorder that I purchased at the end of the Summer. I believe the audio journals were the main reason for my complete absence from this medium of expression as I am able to audio journal in the car on my way to work in the morning. Audio journalling also offered me the opportunity to hone my skills in front of the microphone as I would like to continue my podcasts through my Sigma Podcasts site. I found a web site host that gives a generous amount of space, although the bandwidth is rather on the low side. However, if Sigma Podcasts starts gaining popularity and I get some more hits and people start experiencing bandwidth lock outs then I may move the site back on my local server running out of my home. This of course will mean that the server, a sun workstation running Solaris, would have to be constantly on. However, I'm also thinking of perhaps running a web cam on this server so it may in the end be just as well. Anyway, those are some of the plans and projects for the first half of 2008, the second half will have to wait until we get there.