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.

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.

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.

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.

The little package of bits arrived a few days ago from the lovely people in Hong Kong. I wasted little time in attaching this to that, that to the other, and generally hooking up whatever I could lay hands on. The Tamron and Orestegor lenses can now serve time on the 30D instead of my FD-mount Canons, the old Sigma mirror lens that I nearly sold last year can come back out of its hiding place (and may see light on December's lunar eclipse), and the intervalometer was duly tested... on nothing particularly worthwhile. I waited until today though, to hook the camera up to the Zeiss, helping me to shoot a few sunspots.

The drawback of the APS-C format is that I can't fit the full solar disk in a single exposure. Still, the best of the action was in this part :) If I do want a full disk - as I will at times for both Sun and Moon - I'll need to do a stitch-up; not difficult in itelf, but not ideal in shooting terms.

This was a1/2000 sec exposure, at ISO 100, with a solar filter over the objective. Many exposures were made, but only one was reasonably sharp - the rest were variously affected by wobbly seeing. Here, a spot group is heading for the limb; some bright faculae can also be seen. Below is a detail of the spots. Because of the solar filter, the original image is coloured orange, but for this image I used just the green channel (for best definition) and colourized the image for a more natural tone. It is entirely artificial though.

It became apparent, while testing the interval timer, that the camera battery was past its best. One run last night, shooting time-lapse star trails, petered out after 17 shots. With little hope of a favourable reply, I emailed the retailer to see if the battery was included in the warranty - it was. They will post a replacement, and I can keep the current one, which will be at least be an emergency spare. I suspect though, that for long exposures I might be better off with a mains supply or a larger battery pack. I'll see how I get on with the new battery first.

One of my reasons (justifications) for buying a DSLR was so that I could get back into astrophotgraphy. Film is all very well, and Ektachrome was almost a legendary emulsion, but CCD/CMOS sensors are far more efficient at gathering faint light. An image that might have required 10 minutes of carefully-guided exposre on film, might now be achieved in 30 seconds with a static camera. Anyway... I have exercised the beast with the main telescope at the Brisbane Planetarium, just to make an initial test of its capabilities. The results, such as they are, can be seen on the Astronomy page.

Our numbers have increased this week, augmented by the patter of tiny feet. Fortunately, they don't belong to us.

Just before going away for a few days, Heather went next door to procure cat-sitting services, and learned that our neighbour's daughter-in-law was desperately in need of a child-minder - hence her announcement on returning: "I've got a job!" One doesn't normally nip next door for employment opportunities, so she had to elaborate upon this unexpected statement. The outcome is that she has charge of a toddler and a baby, four days a week, for the foreseeable future. I'm happy to find that they are pleasant children, but dismayed that the three-year-old cannot properly form a gerund. What is happening to educational standards? He does ask questions though, which is encouraging, but the question is usually "why...?". For example: "Why have you turned the TV off?" "Because we're not watching it just now." "Why not?" I felt a discussion about the merits of daytime television would not prove rewarding, so left it there.

Needless to say, we will have to consider child-proofing for the first time in a dozen years (although visiting teenagers have been cause for concern in more recent times).

In more personally satisfying (and less challenging) news, I have set up my newly-retrieved telescope once more, and shall point it at a celestial sight ere long. I left it with a friend in Coffs Harbour when we left last year, as there was neither the space in the truck, nor an likelihood that I would do anything with it for some time. However, it's nice to see my old friend again, even if it is like something from a byegone age, compared to the current offerings in Sky and Telescope. With Jupiter now rising before midnight, it's time to put it to use again though, perhaps even with a camera at the sharp end. Watch this space.