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i was able to take my telescope out last night for a cold ars observing session on my back porch. the seeing last night was the best thus far, though it still wasn’t as good as i’ve seen it through other peoples telescopes. there were moments of really good seeing but the light pollution really detracted from me really seeing the detail i wanted. here are a few of the objects that i was able to see:

• m35 — an open star cluster in gemini with several hundred stars. most of the fainter stars were washed out in the background light pollution but the rest of the field was stunning in my 35mm panoptic. the number of stars in this cluster was really amazing and a pleasure looking at in the panoptic.
• m36 — another open star cluster, this one is in southern auriga. most of the fainter stars in this cluster were also washed out.
• m37 — another open star cluster in southern auriga. more washing out of the fainter stars though the number of brighter stars was much higher than m36.
• m38 — the final of 3 open messier star clusters in southern auriga. this was the faintest and the hardest of the 3 to find. the main reason was that most of my guide stars were washed out. i found it by scanning the field near m36 based on a printout from starry night pro.
• saturn — by far the nicest object of the evening. i saw some great detail in the cloud bands and was able to easily discern the cassini division. i also saw a few objects that i knew were it’s moons but i couldn’t identify them. this object really shows off the quality of the mirror in my portaball. i can’t wait until i get a higher powered eyepiece so i can really examine this planet.
• jupiter — this object didn’t start rising until late in my observing session and even then it was just above a nearby street light so i wasn’t able to see it that well. later this spring / summer i’m sure it is going to look amazing. i was able to see several moons and make out some distinct cloud banding but my knowledge there is severly lacking. i am planning an observing session later this year that is completely focused on jupiter, it’s clouds, and moons. hopefully by then i can speak with some intelligence about them.
• mars — a small red blob, i was hoping for more, but i didn’t get my scope in time and it was near the eastern horizon. maybe later this year it’ll give me some decent views.

like all good observing sessions it’s important to learn something and last night was no exception. the last few times i’ve taken the portaball out i’ve been frustrated with my 9mm nagler type-6 eyepiece. i was seeing some weird light flaring in the eyepiece when i was looking up and i originally though that there was an imperfection in the glass. little did i know that it was another case of human error biting me.


there’s a reason that the telescope came with a light shield that attaches to the upper tube assembly (uta), to block stray light on the opposite side of the focuser. with all of the street and porce lights out here i was getting some serious light trespassing into my upper tube assembly which was causing all kinds of weird light effects in my eyepiece. while observing i was doing a weird hug movement where i had my arms around the uta when all of the sudden the sky went clear and black in the eyepiece and the glare was gone. it was then that i realized that i was blocking the stray light and the proverbial light bulb went on over my head. needless to say i walked into the house and grabbed the light shield. after placing it on the upper tube assembly i was cooking with gas and had some great views the rest of the evening. let’s hope that i can keep these “duh” moments to a minimum shall we.

i picked up a copy of starry night pro version 4.5 from the apple store the other day. it is a detailed planetarium, observing planning, equipment listing, and more software that runs on mac and windows with the same cd (a hidden selling point). after trying out their digital download version i was impressed and decided to pick it up. there are some very cool features in here that are going to make my observing sessions a lot easier going forward. now i can use some of that train time to plan out my cloud free nights.


note — if you decide to pick it up be sure to install the 4.5.2 patch, they’ve fixed a number of bugs.

today is our body for life free day … and it was a pretty good week for us. i’m down another 5 pounds to bring the total to 17 pounds so far and amy was down another 2 pounds. we’re really starting to get into the groove now. the week wasn’t perfect and we did miss one workout but we ate pretty much perfectly. some of our workouts were in the evening, and we’re planning on fixing that next week. i know, those few things made it sound like we didn’t do that well but we did. we ate healthy meals for all meals, we cooked our own meals, we worked out 5 of the 6 days, and we didn’t stray from our plan.


next week we’re planning all morning workouts instead of the evening workouts we did this week. yea, we still worked out but you don’t get all of the advantages of working out in the morning and working out in the evening really does effect the flow of the day. by the time we get home and workout and finally eat it’s like 8:00 pm. it’s so much easier getting up in the morning, working out, and then your done for the rest of the day. plus you have the piece of mind having worked out so there is no time juggling during the day.


we’re entering the phase of body for life where you hit an early plateau which can last a few weeks. we’re prepared for that and will push through it. we’re hunkering down and we’re in this for the long haul.

buried in the various announcements during macworld and ces this past week was a juicy tidbit that came from lacie. they released a 1 terabyte firewire 800/400/usb 2.0 hard drive for $1200. yep, that’s 1000 gb (or 1024 gb if your a purist) of file storage. that works out to be about $1.20 per GB of storage. no, it’s not as cheap as buying a ton of 200 gb drives but if you add in the cost of enclosures for those drives this is an amazing price for that amount of storage.


i recently purchased one of lacie’s 200 gb external drives and i’ve pretty much filled it up already. i was looking at buying another one of their d2 firewire/usb 2.0 drives but this one looks amazing and may make me rethink that purchase. no, i don’t have $1200 sitting around but i can start saving the pennies for when i buy the home server i want, hopefully later this year. this would be a nice addition to that system for complete home archival solution. i record a lot of replay shows and i’d love the option of being able to archive them without caring about file size of how much space i had left on my other drives.


i’ll definitely be watching this product and the various reviews. one can only think that this is going to lead to a few hard drive price wars on the horizon.

i’ve been looking at various hybrid cars over the past few months. basically starting a long term investigation so when we’re ready to buy something we can make an educated choice. i have to admit that the new toyota prius looks pretty amazing. it was recently voted as motor trend 2004 car of the year. i know, now days it seems like you can buy that honor … but if you look at the features of the car you start to see why it was given this title. $20,510 msrp, 16-valve dohc V4, 11.9 gallon tank with 60/51/55 mpg (city/highway/combined) which gives you a on average 654 miles per tank of gas. add to that optional auto parking and integrated bluetooth technology for phones and computers and you have the perfect car. yes, if an american company came out with it i might consider it, but the fact of the matter is they haven’t and aren’t. yea, some can say the hybrid ford escape (been in “coming soon” mode for years) or various general motor pipe dreams but then reality hits you when you look at the timelines on these products or their reliability. toyota has a great track record with the prius and this is their second generation. i have to admit this car is a front runner for me. if i get a chance i’d like to test drive one soon.

so far so good. amy and i had a great week last week, almost perfect except for my coffee habits. we worked out every morning except for one and on that day we worked out in the evening. we were both geeked and extremely happy with the results. i was down 10 pounds and she was down 4 pounds. not to shabby …


we planned out our meals for the entire week and i went grocery shopping today. i love the feeling when i get up to the checkout line and i know that everything i’m buying today is healthy and won’t have a negative effect on my body. we’re eating more vegetables, whole wheat, beans, and lean meat than we used it. it’s really a great feeling when you eat right.


a few things that are helping a lot this challenge are planning, planning, and planning. i know i’ve said it before, but planning has been huge for us. with both of us being really busy with work and school the last thing we can do is wait until a meal to figure out what we’re going to eat. we plan everything out like we should, heck we usually plan it out a few days before hand actually. it has really helped and saves us from making bad food choices.


we’ve been eating a number of meals from the eating for life book. the meals are fantastic and really easy to make. i think the longest meal takes us like 30 minutes and that’s mostly waiting. the rest of the meals are 5 - 10 minutes maximum prep time. they are very enjoyable and don’t really leave us wanting more food. i really recommend picking up this book if your looking for some healthy and very delicious receipts.

i peeked outside tonight and saw that the sky was fairly clear. i then went to the bottom on my web page to check out the clear sky clock for my area. it looked like it was going to stay clear for a few hours before the clouds rolled in. i was excited to say the least, it’s been over a week since i’ve been able to use my telescope.


amy helped my get the telescope outside and once set up i turned on the fans to cool it down. that typically takes about 30 - 60 minutes depending on the temperature. i went back inside and got some work done in the mean time.


ready for a kick butt cold observing session i bundled up, gathered all of my tools, and went outside. i started by taking the cover off the secondary, then the primary, and then moved on to collimating the two mirrors. all told the scope was outside for an hour and it took me about 10 minutes to get set up.


then, i looked up … cloudy. i realized that since putting the scope out i hadn’t even looked up. even when i came outside and started getting set up i hadn’t looked up to see if there were any clouds. needless to say i’m not happy, not that i can do anything about it. i’ve been looking forward to using my telescope all week … i guess i’ll just have to keep waiting.


on the positive side i learned a valuable lesson, look up!!!