After a rash of one-line comments from sources with a Polish flavour and $earch engine 0ptimization tendencies, I have disabled comments.

In other news, I'm profoundly hacked off with the semi-frozen shoulder that's giving me gyp just now. Physio has done little so far, and the next step is a cortico-steroid injection into the inflamed bursa. If it were my left arm, it might not be so bad, but I'd still have to jump through hoops for it. My lovely other half has sewn me a bag of wheat that is making regular trips between microwave and arm, to help ease the ache, so there is great temptation to lie around reading or snoozing, while the heat does its thing.

We've had the pleasure of the company of Lisa and Julia M. for the last couple of days, as they came up to buy a double bass for Julia. The bass was successfully procured yesterday, and today's mission has been some big-city shopping - which I've manfully resisted joining. (Actually, I had a prior engagement with the dentist this morning, that prevented my joining them; said medico totted up a bill in excess of $500, were I to go ahead with his planned work, so I postponed to let my wallet prepare for the shock.) It has been nice to see friends for longer than a flying visit, which has been the norm since we relocated to Qld.

I'm on conventional Mon-Fri work for the next 5 weeks, as we go through some facilities upgrade and maintenance at the Planetarium. I quite like the varying routine inherent in my normal roster - it makes for a less monotonous work cycle - but to have several weekends on the trot when I can do as I please will be a nice change.

Just before we moved house in October, I realised that my right arm wasn't as mobile as it should be; I couldn't lift it as high as I should have been able to do, nor could I reach up behind my back (to hide beer, chocolate, etc) as I could before. As it turned out, it didn't impede the moving process, but eventually it got sufficiently inconvenient that I thought I'd better seek advice. The doc had a look & referred me for a scan, suggesting what might be wrong, and what it might take to fix it. I didn't fancy the last option: surgery. As it is, I'm having physio just now, with but slow progress, if any. A mixture of painful massage, electrical gadgetry and exercise - and an ice pack - but the major effect so far is upon the credit card. He's a bit concerned about the lack of improvement, but we'll give it another week or two before thinking about more drastic measures. Wouldn't be so bad if it were the left arm, but there you go. I do have to be careful about exactly what I do with that arm: reaching too far gives shooting pain, and like self-administered aversion therapy, it's teaching me not to do that...

Thankfully, I can still move a camera around. This image for sale here:

Of course, we did have Christmas in the interval since my last post, and it was a small family affair. Our boy came up to spend a few days with us, but headed back to Coffs for New Year. I think our lazy pace was a bit too slow for him, but the lack of surf might also have had something to do with it. I had to work Christmas Eve, as well as New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, but that's OK; 2.5 time for the latter.

Christmas brought a rather remarkable comet, although the skies around here were on the cloudy side until the morning of the 25th, when we at last granted a view of Comet Lovejoy (what a name for a Christmas comet!). The pic at left was taken after I came back in from taking a few snaps of it just up the road. The following day I went to the coast for a better view. Pictures are over here.

It's been a busy few days. On Saturday night, I was just about to switch off the PC and head for bed, when I saw a Tweet about the impending launch of the latest NASA spacecraft. I don't usually pay much attention to launches, but since it was just 5 minutes away, thought I'd look in. After the launch, we saw live video from a camera mounted on the rocket itself, and I wondered how long it would take to get around to this part of the world, and whether or not it would be visible. I rapidly decided there'd be little hope of seeing anything visually, although it would be above the horizon, being tracked by antennae at the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex.

However, that did remind me that I needed to test a couple of 2nd hand lenses I'd acquired earlier in the day, so plonked one on the camera and headed outside. After 8 minutes and a few shots, I looked behind me and saw an obvious diffuse object near Orion, which I initially assumed was a small cloud ... or a comet ... and then I realised it could be the Mars-bound spacecraft. I hastily turned the camera round, took a quick snap - and was astonished at what was recorded - then got the exposure settings correct and the camera aimed properly, and started snapping away with an automatic interval timer. I kept going until about 5 minutes after I'd lost sight of it in binoculars. I wish I'd seen it sooner, or had just ignored my feeling that it wouldn't have been visible, and actually LOOKED for it! Still, what I recorded seems to have been unique, as there are so far no other reports of anyone else photographing it leaving Earth orbit. A couple of guys have photographed it much further out, but without the exhaust plume that was visible over Australia. Even NASA seems to have been interested in what I saw. Here's just one image, also showing three orbiting satellites passing by; click the image for more pics and timelapse videos.

So. The move was completed. The garage is still a shambles, with the car out on the driveway, but that will change ere long. Heather has done her customary job of getting everything shipshape very quickly, but as ever, the devil is in the detail, and there are plenty of little bits & pieces that have to be properly organised. I am determined to cut down on the clutter that usually surrounds me, so am dragging my heels about filling my room with the same old stuff that I had there in the last house.

We are all quite happy with the new place, which seems to be slightly larger in every room except the kitchen. The aircon is serving us well so far, although we've yet to have any really hot days. So far we are just running it when the heat & humidity are too much, and on the "dry" setting rather than "cool", which does all that we need. No need for 18 degrees around here!

Happy to say that it's pretty quiet here, although I've heard a neighbour with a noisy exhaust roar down the road before sunup a couple of times. At least we've heard no barking dogs so far. It's hardly any further to work from this house either, so I'm content with that. Speaking of the drive to work, here's the 21km, run in less than a minute:

_One unfortunate thing about the timing of the move is that it came at the time I wanted to try to photograph one (or even both) of my asteroids. However, after lugging boxes around I didn't fancy getting up in the small hours and schlepping up to the planetarium to have a go, and I think I might have run out of time. The photo wouldn't be Earth-shattering, but I'd like to catch it while it's as bright as it is, which won't occur again for a few years, apparently. Trouble is, it's now so close to the Sun that it will be in twilight by the time it's high enough in the sky to capture, and you really don't want twilight interfering with a very faint object; nevertheless, I'll have a go. Meanwhile, I've been trying to snap other things, the results of which can be found here and here.

Call me a grumpy old git if you like, but I have a firm dislike of the trick-or-treat business on All Hallows Eve. In Scotland, the custom is to go guising: dressed up, as trick-or-treaters might be, but instead of just holding out a hand and expecting loot to be placed in it, the guisers would perform in return for edible reward. The performance might be a (bad) joke or a song, and could be so dire that you'd want to cough up quickly to cut the performance short, but at least there was effort in return for payment. I daren't answer the door on this night though, for fear that I might appear more fearsome than any pumpkin or turnip lantern, or bedsheet-aided banshee, and use language inappropriate for the audience. Or I might just launch into a lecture about sloth and avarice, and completely freak out the nocturnal visitors.

Here's looking forward to November the 1st.

Some years ago (just 13 years after the discovery of quasars, as it happens), my dear old Dad bought a second-hand telescope at auction. It was a Charles Frank 6-inch reflector, CF then being a company based in Glasgow's east end. I'd proved my lasting interest in astronomy with a pair of smaller telescopes in previous years, and he clearly felt the time was right for me to have a serious-sized instrument. (I think my brother Colin was given a ham radio around the same time, but he couldn't see Saturn with that, so I reckon I got the better deal.)

The outskirts of a city the size of Glasgow was not the ideal place for astronomy, but it could have been worse. Planets, galaxies and nebulae revealed themselves to me, and in time I wanted to photograph what I was seeing through the eyepiece. Trouble was, I didn't know much about photography, except how to release the shutter on a Box Brownie; talk of 103a-O and FP4 type II, and exposures in blue light, seemed like so much exotica. The only course of action therefore, was to learn about photography. Little did I know that the photography would supplant astronomy as the major interest, for quite some time.

I tried to take photographs through that telescope, my first attempt being with a 126 cartridge glued into an aerosol can cap lined with foam rubber, which fitted the eyepiece focuser on the 'scope. I did manage a pic of the Moon, but it was a crude result which I don't recall trying to improve upon; the fact that I'd achieved something seemed to be enough for the time being.

I soon bought a 2nd hand Praktica, and attached that to the scope with a suitable mount. I got some fuzzy snaps of Jupiter and Saturn, which I took along to the Airdrie observatory for feedback and advice (I think I bumped into someone associated with that place at an exhibition somewhere in Glasgow purely by chance). When I proffered my amateurish pics, they asked me how I got such good results -- which was a bit disappointing, as I knew they could be so much better than they were. I never did much more photographically with that 'scope, until last week.

The main motivation for buying a Canon 30D was to use it on the Brisbane Planetarium's Zeiss refractor. However, it's 21 km from home, so not exactly handy for a few quick snaps. I'd had the mirror on my 'scope realuminized a couple of years ago, and it was begging to be used properly for the first time in years, so I dug out the adaptor, did a bit of minor surgery to bring the primary mirror further up the tube, and attached the 30D. At this point, I did not have the 'scope on its mount, as I couldn't be bothered dragging it out of the garage and round the back of the house, so my first tests were done with the 'scope propped up on two chairs and a small wooden stool; hardly ideal, but good enough for a test. Results can be seen here and here.

I doubt there is anyone who actually likes packing up and moving, but I'd almost rather chew off my left hand than go through the loathsome process. We have 2 weeks now, until we get the keys for our new abode. I'll allow a full week overlap, before vacating the current house, although having moved here relatively recently, it shouldn't be too difficult a departure. After 5 years in one place, you can accumulate a fair bit of extra impedimenta, but we probably don't have too much more than we brought here.

Today and tomorrow are my weekend this week, so I ought to do as much as I can to be prepared. It's important to be prepared to be prepared though, so I think I should start with a cuppa. Maybe read a little as well, just so I don't get too far behind.

More nocturnal imaging happening, this time in an effort to photograph Pluto. This distant little object (it takes light about 4 hours to reach us from it) needs a large telescope for you to see it visually, but it can be photographed with a much smaller instrument. Pressing the Zeiss refractor into service again - I'm getting a taste for it now - I managed to record Pluto over the last 2 nights. See the results here.

The Sun has a fine group of spots making its way across the disk just now. Active region (AR) 1302 is a large group, already associated with auroral activity generated by massive emissions of solar plasma. See Spaceweather for images and information.

Today was mixed sun and cloud in Brisbane, but I took advantage of a clear spell and a moderate temperature to shoot a few more images of our closest star. Once again using the Canon 30D at prime focus on the 150mm Zeiss refractor, I made a few dozen exposures; many are needed, to ensure a few reasonably sharp ones. Bad seeing can affect all astronomical images shot through a telescope, but when the observing conditions are: inside a warm dome, on a warm day, then the turbulence can produce appalling image blur. As it happened, today was just below average for the time of year, with fairly stable seeing - possibly the best I've seen so far, from this site. Even so, exposures around 1/1500 second can still be indistinct, so I increased the ISO setting to 400 and used some exposures of 1/6000 second (as it happened, the best exposures were 1/1500 & 1/2000 second).

In the end, I had 3 usable images, from a total of around 40; I have combined them into a GIF animation. I have also compared them to today's white-light image from the SDO satellite, and was pleasantly surprised. The linked image below will take you to the full set of images.

Alan Rickman, as Severus Snape, as voice of GPS: http://tinyurl.com/3cj7w6o (thanks, @jackschofield). Yes, I can imagine it, and it would make for much amusement. Who else would be good in the job? Well, Marvin, the paranoid android certainly comes to mind:

"Roads - don't talk to me about roads. 'Turn left in 100 metres', 'take the 2nd exit at the next roundabout', 'drive for 500 light years without changing direction'. The first 3 hours will be the worst; the second 3 hours will be the worst, too; the third 3 hours you won't enjoy at all, and then you'll go into a bit of a decline..."

Perhaps Norman Wisdom:

"T-turn left here, Mr Grimsdale - no, here. Or is it right? Oh, no, don't laugh at me..."

Eccles:

" 'Ello... You got to make a turn. Bot-tle... have you got de piece of paper? ...de one dat shows us which way to turn. Oi need to look at it. Ah, yes... turn left here ...now dat's funny... Bot-tle... which way up is dis piece of paper supposed to be...?"

Billy Connolly:

"Now, you have to turn left - aye, right here - well, it's some bloody place round here. 'Hey Jimmy! C'mere a wee minute! Gaunae gie's a haun' here?' Y'see, what they don't tell you, about these... these computerized satellite thingies, you know, is that you've got tae know where you're goin' first, so that you know when it's takin' you up some bloody back street it shouldnae, and in three minutes flat, you'll have nae wheels left. No sae smart now, is it?"

Farmer O'Flaherty*:

"Well now, let's see. You could be takin' de next left ... but if you're aaskin' me, oi'd be takin the right tourn about foive moiles back. Dat way, you can stop at Gilligan's for a quick Guiness or two. It's the best pub east of MacGillycuddy's Reeks, so it is. Then, when you've had maybe one or two more, and a good serve of colcannon to help you on your way, then it won't much matter which way you go. I certainly won't be after worryin' about it..."
  * Winner of a Nobel Prize - he was out standing in his field.

The Prime Minister:

"As I have told the House on at least 5 occasions in the past week, the Leader of the Opposition is confused [Order!] about the real issue here. It is not about left and right, and scoring cheap political points, nor is there any prospect of a u-turn during this parliament. [Order!!] The only real option, as the Honourable Member well knows, is to keep going straight ahead, until we emerge at the end of the tunnel - a tunnel which this Government has constructed on time and under budget [hear, hear] in contrast to the situation while the Honourable Member was in office [rhubarb, rhubarb] representing an electorate just 5 kilometres beyond the end of the tunnel, along a section of federally-funded divided road that was subject to gross mismanagement of resources and lengthy delays [baa, moo, hiss] ..."

Who would you have as your voice of reason on the road?