Ok, completely random post, but the Title of the last post is one of more favorite Iron Maiden tracks, so im posting up a video to bang my head to. :D
Saturday, 28 February 2009
Thursday, 26 February 2009
Wasted Years
Although im looking forward to some exciting adventures in space, there are some things that bring me back down with a bump. I shall now bore you with one such event.
Today was one of my regular hospital appointments, anyone who has to have regular check ups know how much of a chore this can be, although they are only trying to help, I cant help but wonder if some appointments cant be handled over the phone. That aside, today I meet with my Psychotherpist. There was alot of talk about Therapies and various options aswell as how im doing in the clinic, and how can the clinic help me etc etc etc.
But the bit the struck most was the letter she was composing, it was like an all incompassing letter, one that explains how im doing, what im doing, what they are doing, whats to come, what options etc. The bit the stood out was the first part, it listed how long I had been with the condition I have, roughly 6 years.
It wasnt til I read that, it finally hit home, what has happened to those six years? I can remember the accident as if it was yesterday, before it happened I was fully abled, looking to build my career in the IT world, then 'BAM' it all changes. And here I am now, 6 years on, its true when they say life can throw anything at you, and yet all I could think about was, wheres it all gone?
Lucky for me, im trying to do/achieve things, many of which you'll more than likely read about here, so now I should be thinking "better late than never". But it would have been so nice to fill those years with something, so far my condition is older than my daughter, my fear currently is that, well, I shall word this how my main consulatant worded it in a letter once "His condition has effected his system globally", lovely huh? But my fear is that as I continue my fight against it, the worse things become, ive gone from walking, to a walking stick, to a crutch, to two fitted crutches and a wheelchair when needed, I hope the wheelchair doesnt take over.
This aside, I shall keep my chin up, and look forward to 'better things' plus all that aside, im still Father to a lovely daughter and at the very least, I can take part in her upbrining which alone is fantastic. She also wants to use the telescope, so I might have to arrange something when the family go spoting, that aside I am planning another night with my able-car friend :) so i'll keep you posted :D
Dave
Today was one of my regular hospital appointments, anyone who has to have regular check ups know how much of a chore this can be, although they are only trying to help, I cant help but wonder if some appointments cant be handled over the phone. That aside, today I meet with my Psychotherpist. There was alot of talk about Therapies and various options aswell as how im doing in the clinic, and how can the clinic help me etc etc etc.
But the bit the struck most was the letter she was composing, it was like an all incompassing letter, one that explains how im doing, what im doing, what they are doing, whats to come, what options etc. The bit the stood out was the first part, it listed how long I had been with the condition I have, roughly 6 years.
It wasnt til I read that, it finally hit home, what has happened to those six years? I can remember the accident as if it was yesterday, before it happened I was fully abled, looking to build my career in the IT world, then 'BAM' it all changes. And here I am now, 6 years on, its true when they say life can throw anything at you, and yet all I could think about was, wheres it all gone?
Lucky for me, im trying to do/achieve things, many of which you'll more than likely read about here, so now I should be thinking "better late than never". But it would have been so nice to fill those years with something, so far my condition is older than my daughter, my fear currently is that, well, I shall word this how my main consulatant worded it in a letter once "His condition has effected his system globally", lovely huh? But my fear is that as I continue my fight against it, the worse things become, ive gone from walking, to a walking stick, to a crutch, to two fitted crutches and a wheelchair when needed, I hope the wheelchair doesnt take over.
This aside, I shall keep my chin up, and look forward to 'better things' plus all that aside, im still Father to a lovely daughter and at the very least, I can take part in her upbrining which alone is fantastic. She also wants to use the telescope, so I might have to arrange something when the family go spoting, that aside I am planning another night with my able-car friend :) so i'll keep you posted :D
Dave
Sunday, 22 February 2009
Slow Sunday
Its a slow Sunday, so i'll post up this video off youtube, just to show how small everything 'really' is. Enjoy!
Saturday, 21 February 2009
First night in a friends backgarden.
Tonights the first night I get to try out the telescope, albeit ive owned it now for about 2 weeks. (Been quite unwell when it was ordered). We did try last night, however the cloudcover was too much, plus we were stalked by a rather evil looking pony, think Cujo, just bigger.
So, on with today, first I recieved a link from my friend Jumile with a site that covered cloud cover in and around the UK (http://www.metcheck.com/V40/UK/HOME/) thanks to Jumile on that one. (Thanks mate!) and we discovered that cloud cover wasnt as bad tonight. Roughly 34% at the time according to metcheck, plus during the day there wasnt a cloud overhead plus I was feeling much better health wise, so tonight was marked as the night we went star gazing for the first time.
We used a great little program called Stellarium to see what was "up there", plus it was a great way to get directions and make notes in journals, I learnt that having a compass really helps matters. On a side note, Stellarium is great, it also opensource, so its free. So, the least I could do for them is pimp them http://www.stellarium.org/. Ok, that aside (Theres also a copy of Starry Night 6 on the way on the post to me.) we took our notes and set out to do some gazing.
This leads to the "bummer" part of the post, although I have Telescope, binos, compass etc etc we didnt have any camera equipment, so we're out of luck on the picture front, im hoping to recitfify this in the future with some way of taking images and posting them, even for my own records, as tonight was amazing and I really wanted to have a "keepsake" for myself, however, its forever in my memory and one day I hope to share pictures of my findings.
Im cursed with a crippling back condition that effects my legs hips and back, however, I have a completely fully-abled friend with a car! Which, I can tell you makes this a whole lot easier, so, we pack scope and stuff in his car, and drive to, oddly enough, his mums house. Upon questioning this rather odd choice, it soon came clear, his mother had a large garden bathed in darkness, now his choice made perfect sense, plus his mum kept coffee coming out! Plus I was able to witness a knock on effect first hand, things we found and saw (which I am getting to!) she wanted to see for herself, and of course, hurried into the house to tell family, of whom of course also wanted to see what was out there, so maybe tonight the seeds of curiosty have been planted in a few more people! :)
(Of course, the more we found, the more coffee came, so it was win win for me...)
All this aside, we set up. We needed a nice bright point to start with, to the South of us we had the constellation of Orion.
Unfortunately, this isnt our picture. However, I have used this to show the Orion system.
So, on with today, first I recieved a link from my friend Jumile with a site that covered cloud cover in and around the UK (http://www.metcheck.com/V40/UK/HOME/) thanks to Jumile on that one. (Thanks mate!) and we discovered that cloud cover wasnt as bad tonight. Roughly 34% at the time according to metcheck, plus during the day there wasnt a cloud overhead plus I was feeling much better health wise, so tonight was marked as the night we went star gazing for the first time.
We used a great little program called Stellarium to see what was "up there", plus it was a great way to get directions and make notes in journals, I learnt that having a compass really helps matters. On a side note, Stellarium is great, it also opensource, so its free. So, the least I could do for them is pimp them http://www.stellarium.org/. Ok, that aside (Theres also a copy of Starry Night 6 on the way on the post to me.) we took our notes and set out to do some gazing.
This leads to the "bummer" part of the post, although I have Telescope, binos, compass etc etc we didnt have any camera equipment, so we're out of luck on the picture front, im hoping to recitfify this in the future with some way of taking images and posting them, even for my own records, as tonight was amazing and I really wanted to have a "keepsake" for myself, however, its forever in my memory and one day I hope to share pictures of my findings.
Im cursed with a crippling back condition that effects my legs hips and back, however, I have a completely fully-abled friend with a car! Which, I can tell you makes this a whole lot easier, so, we pack scope and stuff in his car, and drive to, oddly enough, his mums house. Upon questioning this rather odd choice, it soon came clear, his mother had a large garden bathed in darkness, now his choice made perfect sense, plus his mum kept coffee coming out! Plus I was able to witness a knock on effect first hand, things we found and saw (which I am getting to!) she wanted to see for herself, and of course, hurried into the house to tell family, of whom of course also wanted to see what was out there, so maybe tonight the seeds of curiosty have been planted in a few more people! :)
(Of course, the more we found, the more coffee came, so it was win win for me...)
All this aside, we set up. We needed a nice bright point to start with, to the South of us we had the constellation of Orion.
Unfortunately, this isnt our picture. However, I have used this to show the Orion system.It was a wonderfully clear night and the whole of Orion was visable by the naked eye, we used Betelgeuse as our first point to line the telescope up. Betelgeuse is the red star of Orion, also the 2nd largest in the constellation, our reason for choosing this star as refence was the way it stood out, making for us, an obivous choice. Some twiddling and pointing, and not understanding how a finder scope works, reading the manual, learning how the finderscope works, cursing because we playing with the nuts that hold the finder scope on, arent there to hold it on but were for fine-tuning the finderscope, we got over that hurdle... (lession learnt here: read manuals folks!)
So, now we know how the finderscope and twiddling its nuts (can I say that on this...?) to fine tune and how this all works in relation to the main scope, we got it pointed at Betelgeuse. And looked in the view finder of the scope to see...
A splodgey orange blob messy thing.
Now, it does help the viewer if we start playing with the various focus controls of the telescope. (refer back to my lession, read manuals) we then brought Betelgeuse slowly but surely, into focus and then stars I had never seen before tuned into crystal clarity. I looked away from the finder scope, my friend, who has now become a really dab hand at keeping the scope in line with what we're looking at is moving various bits keeping the star in view, I look up and I just see the Orion formation, I look in the view finder of the telescope, and I see it again, stars, formations that ive never seen before with my humble naked eye is as clear as crystal. This was my first "wow!" moment, I look again, its all moving, its alive everysingle bit of it is alive, my friend has a look, this is his first time, and I think the same "wow!" thing happened. Staying with the Orion constellation we move the telescope around slightly, by this time Orion had moved on, we werent quite south anymore and more southwest, we aimed to the bottom part of Orion. (Below Orions Belt.) We were seeing things for the first time, and I think we were unprepared to be completely honest, because we pulled a bright star into view, but it looked different, my friend clamed he could see four points around a brighter middle star, whereas I couldnt see this, but what I thought was possibly a binary star, or at least, two stars close to each other. Checking out Stellarium when I got home, I do believe what I saw was possibly the bright star Ori, HP26199 and HP26197. Ori is quite a bright star, but very close to the other two, and im pondering on what it really was. Another possibility was M43, however this just reinforces the fact I need to have better research with me before I go spotting.
We then decide, lets try another constellation, first night and all, you know, lets looks at lots of stuff...:)
The 2nd most obvious choice was Ursa Major. The Bear, or as some people know it, The Plough or Big Dipper, but lets just call it Judith... I mean Ursa Major for now.
Again, not our picture :( But this image shows the "Big Dipper" of Ursa Major quite nicely.
This raised the issue of lighting, more importantly, the streetlighting that will be behind us. We had an idea of using the darkest corner of the garden and lowering the telescope, so it will be as dark as possible where we were and where the light couldnt effect us, hopefully. And be jove, it worked! We didnt find Saturn straight away of course, all we had was a rough direction the ringed gas giant might be, some luck was to be on our side. Checking the book we had (and only book I brought, silly me) we were looking for a yellow star, this is everything we had to go on, yellowstar, possibly Southeast. We had about 3 or 4 possible contenders, this was by the naked eye, I was thinking that simply looking using the telescope could open up a whole new can of worms, where 3 -4 yellowish stars suddenly become several thousand.
We didnt let it bother us that much, the first star, wasnt the gas giant we were looking for, but we struck gold on only our 2nd attempt. My friend, now very good at the whole pointing and finding things on the telescope was making alot of "urm" and "Err" sounds. Then very quietly he said, almost a whisper, "Ive found her."
Excitedly we use the view finder, and he was right, I was looking at the yellow giant and I could make out the ring formation either side, we brought it into better focus, but it was moving accross the view finder quite quickly, but undetered we kept Saturn in view, thats when I had a brainwave. When I purchased the telescope, it came with some free lenses etc, one of which was a Barlow lense, so straight away we put the Barlow into the the scope re-attach our lens, we both using scope and viewfinder find the planet once again, this time in even better detail, we can see the formation of the rings and the shadow of the rings cast on the planet itself. It was perhaps, the most awe-inspired humberling moments ive had in recent years, I was, if you forgive the pun (which isnt intended) star-struck. Straight away, im texting friends as if my partner has given birth to our second child. For one moment, I felt I was part of the universe, its hard to explain just how much of an effect Saturn had, afterall, this is the first time I had seen it, with my own eyes and, proudly my telescope and to take in the fact that Saturn is roughly 886 million miles away I was simply blown away. Its now I really wished I had camera equipment for the scope I wanted, not only to publish, to be honest, that wasnt foremost idea if I had a picture, but it would be my picture of Saturn, my keepsake of the 21st Feb 2009 where I set my telescope for the first time in my mates mums backgarden and we saw Saturn.
We kept Saturn in view for roughly just under an hour, we were just simply amazed by it, first night out and this is whats on offer, I cant wait for more! We would have looked on for longer, however it started to get very cold, and just getting over quite a bad illness I didnt want to get ill again, plus that and the fact my back is hurting something awful brought me back down to Earth, we pack up for the evening, however for next time we plan to get some proper notes of the sky that night and set up some proper viewing "goals" if you will, basically we are going to be prepared next time, plus that and looking for other locations to spot from. But I reckon, Saturn from a backgarden isnt bad, isnt bad at all.
Dave
So, now we know how the finderscope and twiddling its nuts (can I say that on this...?) to fine tune and how this all works in relation to the main scope, we got it pointed at Betelgeuse. And looked in the view finder of the scope to see...
A splodgey orange blob messy thing.
Now, it does help the viewer if we start playing with the various focus controls of the telescope. (refer back to my lession, read manuals) we then brought Betelgeuse slowly but surely, into focus and then stars I had never seen before tuned into crystal clarity. I looked away from the finder scope, my friend, who has now become a really dab hand at keeping the scope in line with what we're looking at is moving various bits keeping the star in view, I look up and I just see the Orion formation, I look in the view finder of the telescope, and I see it again, stars, formations that ive never seen before with my humble naked eye is as clear as crystal. This was my first "wow!" moment, I look again, its all moving, its alive everysingle bit of it is alive, my friend has a look, this is his first time, and I think the same "wow!" thing happened. Staying with the Orion constellation we move the telescope around slightly, by this time Orion had moved on, we werent quite south anymore and more southwest, we aimed to the bottom part of Orion. (Below Orions Belt.) We were seeing things for the first time, and I think we were unprepared to be completely honest, because we pulled a bright star into view, but it looked different, my friend clamed he could see four points around a brighter middle star, whereas I couldnt see this, but what I thought was possibly a binary star, or at least, two stars close to each other. Checking out Stellarium when I got home, I do believe what I saw was possibly the bright star Ori, HP26199 and HP26197. Ori is quite a bright star, but very close to the other two, and im pondering on what it really was. Another possibility was M43, however this just reinforces the fact I need to have better research with me before I go spotting.
We then decide, lets try another constellation, first night and all, you know, lets looks at lots of stuff...:)
The 2nd most obvious choice was Ursa Major. The Bear, or as some people know it, The Plough or Big Dipper, but lets just call it Judith... I mean Ursa Major for now.
Again, not our picture :( But this image shows the "Big Dipper" of Ursa Major quite nicely.We set the scope to be pointing at Ursa Major, which was East of our location, and this is where we found our biggest issue of using my friends mums back garden. Roughly Northeast, directly opposite the garden, theres like a communal parking lot that the residents use. Being an already dark area, and I can only imagine for the safty of the users of the parking lot, theres a collection of quite bright street lamps. Basically, this "bleached out" most of the eastern night sky, until now, I never would have known that light can play havoc like this to a telescope. We never got to see any of Ursa Major this evening.
Pondering on what to do, and not knowing too much of the night sky (Again, research and lack off, this being my own fault.) I remembered something off Stellarium, Saturn was in the Southeast of the night sky.
Pondering on what to do, and not knowing too much of the night sky (Again, research and lack off, this being my own fault.) I remembered something off Stellarium, Saturn was in the Southeast of the night sky.
This raised the issue of lighting, more importantly, the streetlighting that will be behind us. We had an idea of using the darkest corner of the garden and lowering the telescope, so it will be as dark as possible where we were and where the light couldnt effect us, hopefully. And be jove, it worked! We didnt find Saturn straight away of course, all we had was a rough direction the ringed gas giant might be, some luck was to be on our side. Checking the book we had (and only book I brought, silly me) we were looking for a yellow star, this is everything we had to go on, yellowstar, possibly Southeast. We had about 3 or 4 possible contenders, this was by the naked eye, I was thinking that simply looking using the telescope could open up a whole new can of worms, where 3 -4 yellowish stars suddenly become several thousand.
We didnt let it bother us that much, the first star, wasnt the gas giant we were looking for, but we struck gold on only our 2nd attempt. My friend, now very good at the whole pointing and finding things on the telescope was making alot of "urm" and "Err" sounds. Then very quietly he said, almost a whisper, "Ive found her."
Excitedly we use the view finder, and he was right, I was looking at the yellow giant and I could make out the ring formation either side, we brought it into better focus, but it was moving accross the view finder quite quickly, but undetered we kept Saturn in view, thats when I had a brainwave. When I purchased the telescope, it came with some free lenses etc, one of which was a Barlow lense, so straight away we put the Barlow into the the scope re-attach our lens, we both using scope and viewfinder find the planet once again, this time in even better detail, we can see the formation of the rings and the shadow of the rings cast on the planet itself. It was perhaps, the most awe-inspired humberling moments ive had in recent years, I was, if you forgive the pun (which isnt intended) star-struck. Straight away, im texting friends as if my partner has given birth to our second child. For one moment, I felt I was part of the universe, its hard to explain just how much of an effect Saturn had, afterall, this is the first time I had seen it, with my own eyes and, proudly my telescope and to take in the fact that Saturn is roughly 886 million miles away I was simply blown away. Its now I really wished I had camera equipment for the scope I wanted, not only to publish, to be honest, that wasnt foremost idea if I had a picture, but it would be my picture of Saturn, my keepsake of the 21st Feb 2009 where I set my telescope for the first time in my mates mums backgarden and we saw Saturn.
We kept Saturn in view for roughly just under an hour, we were just simply amazed by it, first night out and this is whats on offer, I cant wait for more! We would have looked on for longer, however it started to get very cold, and just getting over quite a bad illness I didnt want to get ill again, plus that and the fact my back is hurting something awful brought me back down to Earth, we pack up for the evening, however for next time we plan to get some proper notes of the sky that night and set up some proper viewing "goals" if you will, basically we are going to be prepared next time, plus that and looking for other locations to spot from. But I reckon, Saturn from a backgarden isnt bad, isnt bad at all.
Dave
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
