No, this is not a joke. This is not april fools day!

I setup my telescope last night, first time in 4 months, and I actually used it! I took some video data of Mars at around 12:30am-1:00am, and got up again this morning to image Saturn at 4:30am.

Wow it had been a while.. I didn’t forget anything but everything just took a little bit longer and felt a bit more clunky. The seeing wasn’t horrible, which was nice for a change. But it wasn’t good either.

Unfortunately fog this morning prevented any useful Saturn data – it was really dim even at 7.5fps, so I just captured 1 dim red channel and packed up. I couldn’t believe how high Saturn is already! I was looking for it lower on the horizon but it turned out to be just a star

Anyway I’ll process the Mars data later and see what comes of it.

Once I got into it, I was enjoying it enough – but it didn’t start out that way. At the start, I had the usual thoughts… “please be cloudy”, “please be horrible seeing” – anything to turn around and crawl back into bed.

But I fought through those feelings, and this morning I have that tired, gritty-eyes feeling that I remember.. LOL.

Hi all

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve had any news or images to post – sorry about that. It’s been a crazy couple of weeks both at work and at home.

Work has been flat out, as I’ve taken on new responsibilities since a colleague resigned, and trying to come up to speed with all the work he was doing and managing new staff has been very time consuming.

And at home, it’s been a very mixed bag. Unfortunately my Nan passed away last week (she was 82), and we had her funeral on Friday. So it was a very sad week.

My Nan on her wedding day (centre)

My Nan about 2 years ago

Dealing with all of that has meant I just haven’t been in the right head-space for astronomy. My motivation is at an almost all-time low at the moment. The last 3 weeks has seen fairly reasonable weather, probably with 10 or more clear nights, but I haven’t been outside once.

The consistent terrible seeing from earlier in the year has tainted me and I just have no confidence that seeing conditions will be good. I need to find some enjoyment in astronomy again, getting together with friends and just having fun.

Hopefully IISAC2009 will be a turning point. Only 5 weeks to go, so not long to wait! I need to finish organising it!

Thanks for being patient – hopefully I’ll have some new images to post soon.

Over the past 4-6 months, my passion and enthusiasm for astronomy and astrophotography has been on a definite decline. I found myself hoping it would be cloudy when I stepped outside. I found excuse after excuse not to setup my gear. I found myself being pickier and pickier with the conditions and wouldn’t bother to image Jupiter unless the seeing was well above average (which this year, has been very rare indeed).

What is seeing? Seeing refers to the level of turbulence in the atmosphere, caused by local conditions and high altitude winds (called the jetstream). If the seeing is very good, the image is very steady and sharp. If the seeing is bad, the image is a wobbly mess of jello with no sharp features and makes it impossible to get a good, sharp image. 

I found I wasn’t reading many threads on IceInSpace or other astronomy forums. I’d also been lifting my level of interest and enjoyment in my other hobbies, including Karate and World War 2 history, and astronomy had certainly been taking a back seat. 

I was conscious of what was happening but what I could I do about it? I just wasn’t getting the enjoyment from astronomy that I had in the past. 

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