April 18th

7Y7A20097Y7A1999Well, we have had WEEKS of cloud and the grey gloom.

However, in that time, had a great bonfire, tidied up the garden, got some daffs from Allison G, now buried round the garden. Plan to clear around Sunshine terrace and plant a few honeysuckle azaleas, Rhodo luteum. May order more and some verbena, lilium regano from Glendoick or RHS, Dug up a laod of gorse and watched it disappear into the sky with a crackle.

Robert came and finished marble plinth work and tiled wall, looks great> Merc goes this week, back to Finance company, bunch of sharks and vultures, inspection tomorrow.

 

Skynet went live on the 11th April at 19.15hours- plugged the Paragon setup into the router, fitted it to Lounge wall, drilled through wall, fed cable back from outside into Lounge, having disconnected IEEE connector, reconnected plug to said cable with plastic BT tool for wires, then buried the armoured ethernet and connected up to PC in Obby, now all I have to do is get a decent camera for live picture cameras. Cant decide between SBIG or Atik. May have to make do with the Minitron for the moment.

Have had two good weekends away with Barmy, more next month, Cobbler or Ben Narnain. My fitness is rubbish at the moment, too heavy and eating too much.

Life feels good,sleeping better, catching up with the various kids regularly. Portugal in 5 weeks!!! Before then , sailing for a week, John and H and Gabi chez vous on Saturday.

Need to see my Dad, going down end of month to collect Lex and will see him then.

Tonight, a gap in the clouds, actually Moon very bright and clear, in conjunction with Jupiter. Took Baader diagonal off and put new adapter ( from FLO) with 0.85mm reducer onto canon and,

hey presto. Got some good photos of the Moon. LiveView and magnification makes a HUGE difference

Struggled a bit with the camera setting, not really au fait with all settings. However settled on centre average weighting, MF, ISO 400 and 125. Should be at f11 or f16 with aISo 100 and shutter speed of 100. God knows what I took but it was not that. Will need to programme Camera setting 3 for Moon, add in bracketing of +/- 1EV

Next night, back out after Barmy, put on CNC adapter from the States, fitted it with moonlight filter from Baader, took off diagonal and used mount to find Moon- way off! Next project is to realign Polarscope and then do three star alignment with synscan- not brave enough yet to use EQ MoD.

 

However, centred on Moon quickly and then snapped off some photos, very good, using bracketing, made a big difference. Had to move from C3 to Manual, must try and programme C3 for that.

Loaded them up onto site. Checked hercules, still hours away at midnight here, will prob be next month before can try for M13

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