joedid

  Since the nights have been so cold and snowy - I chose a sunny day to test out the solar filter included with the Seestar. A feature I knew existed but had no interested in until I saw the sunspots in a photo I took.  I'm honestly amazed that I was able to capture sunspots from a pretty basic experiment with the equipment. I picked a quiet parking lot of a park near a river to enjoy a 28 degree day but with the sun it felt like 70, in a relative sense compared to every other day this winter. Calibrating the compass is no problem but I was having trouble with the leveling - you don't realize how uneven the world is until your trying to make something bubble level.  There has to be a better way than adjusting each leg and hoping you got it right and this was what I found. A leveling device that can be easily adjusted at the top of the tripod.  For this photo, I was able to zoom in but that added complexity with the wind now being a factor so I believe that's part of ...

It was a day to splurge, and I am now the proud owner of a telescope (of sorts). I have been obsessed with trying to determine what type of telescope I should buy. Each research session led me in a different direction, with different goals and a price that kept increasing.  Normally when this happens, it just ends up being a few weeks of research and obsession before I realize I don't have the time or resources to act on my impulses but this day was different. The dilemma I faced dealt with a question, do I want to take photos of the sky, or do I want to use my eyeballs to look. It turns out, those are not easily done with the same piece of equipment. I often end up in a situation where my inexperience won't allow me to pick a path forward and at some point in my life I realized that means I need to simplify the goal. This resets my expectations of going all in to just dipping my toe into the hobby and so I've settled on a Seestar S50 digital telescope which allows me to t...