Moonshed

I found myself nodding in agreement as I read your comments, so much there that I connected to. With regards to universities I really don’t know what it is they are teaching their students today, how to fill in grant application forms for exciting new projects, such as researching why dogs sniff lampposts? Years ago English universities were considered the centres of excellence whence came great politicians, Prime Ministers, scientists, businessmen who created empires, and so much more. What do they produce today? Maybe the best of them, Oxbridge say, still create those great individuals, but the other 99% seem to be a places where teenagers go when they have left school yet don’t want to work for a living, it’s just a fun place to hang out with other like minded entitled millennials who as you say go trekking in the Andes. Your last paragraph saddens me though, but I kind of get where you are coming from.

Thank you for presenting all that information on old Birmingham and its history of metal working. I found the section on those old buttons fascinating for some reason, will have to show it to my wife. I absolutely love the Brumagen screwdriver, still very popular today in some quarters.

On the ninth day of Christmas my true love sent to me: nine heating tapes eight AA batteries seven filters for imaging six eyepieces five counter weights four cleaning wipes three tripod feet two thermal gloves and a lovely dome observatory

Hi Albion, I would be more convenient if you could post your images as JPEGs or similar that would allow us to view them here instead of having to download them one at a time in order to see what they are, it just makes life a little easier 😀 Thanks.

The wording of the title was not of course meant to be taken quite so literally. My wife for instance loves to sew, to make dresses and tops and....things, and gets so involved in watching some YouTuber’s sewing vlogs (is that the right word?) and gets very passionate about everything sewing. My brother-in-law is into collecting air guns and rifles and loves to carve new wooden stocks for them and tinker around with the firing mechanism, he can easily spend a week or more making one rifle stock from a block of wood. While these hobbies hold only a passing interest for me, apart from the wood carving, I can fully appreciate it is their thing as much as astronomy is mine, which of course they think to be very boring. As you so rightly say, it would indeed be pretty boring if everyone was an astronomer.

I sometimes think that to admit to being in awe or emotionally moved by something is to show a sign of weakness that cannot be tolerated by today’s society. This appears to be an extension of the old myth that men don’t cry, that’s what girls do. To be honest though at my stage in life Heather I really don’t give a jot as to what others may think of my marvelling at the wonders of the universe while they cry when their team drops a point. C’est la Vie! Each to their own.

“No, growing older isn’t bad, it’s better than the alternative...😀 You hit the nail on the head there TinyClanger, and no mistake! 12 years ago on the 23rd December 2008 I was in a hospital bed in Spain, we had retired there in March that year, and my wife and I were waiting for the results of the many scans and tests they had carried out on my sore and aching body. In came a senior doctor with the usual retinue, I had not seen her before but she spoke a little English, more than my regular one anyway. She calmly announced that I had cancer, (advanced prostate cancer), it had spread all over my body, here, here, here and here. (She pointed variously to her head, shoulder, ribs, and lower back.) I am sorry, it is too late to fix this, another doctor will see you later and explain to you everything. The “explain everything” was merely to add that I had a life expectancy of around six months and they were sending me home to die, with a box full of pain killers. Okay, they were a tad overly pessimistic with the six months 😂 and because of the amazing new cancer drugs I am now taking I am far more likely to die of anything other than cancer! The point being is that we never know what may be round the next corner, we don’t know when the time will come to “shuffle off our mortal coil”. Once we have future needs taken care off we need to live each day to the full, no point in waiting for that special occasion before opening that special bottle of wine or taking that fabulous holiday, fo it now, while you still can! Sorry, I’ve rambled on a bit, always happens when I open that special Christmas bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape, goes strong my head!

Yes it’s definitely worth it! I can recall when I was very young (longish story coming up so those with a short attention span may like to flutter away now) we were coming back from a family wedding late at night that sticks in my mind because we crossed the Thames by ferry boat and my dad took me down to the observation platform so I could see the ship’s engine, as a six year old I was very impressed! Anyway, walking home from the train station I became very tired so dad lifted me up on his shoulders and gave me a flying angel the rest of the way home. Our street was still lit by gas lampposts in those days, as were all the local Romford streets, and they only provided a small pool of light under each one so as we travelled along I could see the dark sky and stars ,then at the next light couldn’t see the sky, then I could again, and so it went on like switching a light on and off. That is the first memory I have of actually noticing the stars and being puzzled by them, wondering what they could be all those years ago. After that I was soon home, tucked up in bed and the stars were no longer important to me for the next 10 years, at which point I bought my first telescope, a 4” Newtonian from Charles Frank of Glasgow. Best thing I ever did!

Welcome to SGL. With that lovely new scope you now own you are bound to have a wonderful time observing, and photographing, the universe for many years to come. Here’s hoping for clear skies.

Oh come now! You can’t leave us hanging like that. What chance circumstances? 🤔

It is sad. I have grandchildren aged 18 and 20 and they don’t have the slightest interest in astronomy, not even enough to come and take a peek through my telescope when I am actually outside using it! I do find it sad, hurtful to be honest. I can only suppose it’s because I am getting very old, but isn’t 75 the new 50?

When I look through my telescope at the incredible beauty of countless stars twinkling against the darkness of the infinite universe, I am genuinely struck by the wonder of it all, by the sheer awesomeness of what I am seeing. I am looking at stars that were created within colossal clouds of gas and dust billions of years ago, some of which will no longer even exist, they will have come and gone in a blink of an eye compared to the cosmological time scale of the universe which is measured not in decades, centuries or even millennia, but in cycles of time beyond our human comprehension. To be able to look through even the smallest of telescopes, or binoculars, or even just using the naked eye, enables us all to witness for ourselves these celestial marvels, these cosmological creations, there for all to see and experience. I feel that very often that first eagerly awaited look through a telescope, be it of our nearest neighbour the Moon, or a planet, star cluster, nebula or galaxy, can be so impactful as to create a lifelong memory, but even more incredibly it can connect us to the universe in some strange and powerful way that affects us for the rest of our lives, we become astronomers.

I went there next week.

I had a go at trying to explain the complexities of time, and a few other scientific theories, back at the start of the century in a websites I made, I later published all my wacky ideas in a book. if you want to dip into the time section and amuse yourself be my guest, it’s a subject that fascinates me. http://www.thekeyboard.org.uk/What is Time.htm

I think the whole idea of time travel is fraught with paradoxes. For starters, by just travelling to the future implies that the future must already exist “out there” for you to be able travel to and must therefore be as real as “your” time, same with the past. This to me appears to suggest that all time, past, present and future, exists simultaneously, we occupying one small fraction of a second of it, because all said and done how long does the present last before it becomes the past? And where does it go to? I need another glass of single malt to help make sense of it all.

That’s great! Would you mind telling how you captured it?

In one house I lived I had a fairly good view from by back garden, except for next door who seemed to always have every light burning plus an insecurity light out the back. My solution was to build a screen between me and all that light, it was just two poles I would place into tubes sunk into the lawn and stretch a tarp between them. It worked just fine and was only put up when observing.

We can only hope that poor teddy didn’t get too traumatised by finding a bright red dot aimed straight at him 🤣

My grandson bought me this mug, it gives details about the solar system when holding a hot brew. Gotta love it! Cheers!

Marvellous! Such fine detail.

On the fourth day of Christmas my true love sent to me: four cleaning wipes three tripod feet two thermal gloves and a lovely dome observatory.....

If you really have to PhotoShop an image at least make sure you get the details right, do a little research first, otherwise you will end up with a joke image such as this.

On the first day of Christmas my true love sent to me: A lovely dome observatory.........

Have to say vlaiv I am impressed with your image but even more with your ingenuity.

Saying that “the brain is only making a model of what it sees” really doesn’t have any bearing on how we describe either an eyepiece or a screen or what we see looking at them; this is because in both cases, all in fact, we use the same two eyes which the brain models in the same way. I really don’t see the need to bring in how the brain models what we see as it’s the same for everyone completely regardless of what we are looking at! I said that standing next to the Grand Canyon is actually seeing it, as opposed to viewing it on tv screen in Norfolk, to respond by saying that “you are not standing next to, or anywhere close, to 99.99% of space objects you look at.” does not even merit a response. I have already said that we have sorted it out and that we can now move on to other things responding to GavStar as quoted below so I really was not expecting yet another attack on my comments. I do hope that is the end of the matter because it has become rather wearisome. I’m done with it regardless.