Back on the moon

I spent a while in the afternoon practising focusing on a CD stuck to a fence post on the other side of the garden. This, after trying to focus on an advert for a shower - which written on paper had started to dissolve in the rain and had a tendency to ripple in the wind. It was rather fun to suddenly see a mostly unclothed woman jump into view - and I had to check I wasn't focusing on a neighbours house or something. Anyway, when the sellotape failed for the 3rd time, I switched to the CD and blue-tack. I got to the stage where I could almost read the bar code, despite only just being able to see the CD itself. The focusing with the CCD camera was particularly awkward and difficult to get right, and it didn't look as clear as through a lens. A new release of the software downloaded helped a bit too, and I'm hoping my flexible focusing knob will help when it arrives.

Despite it raining for most of the day, it suddenly cleared last night which I noticed whilst driving to the shop to stock up on a load of food items. I just knew it would have clouded over my the time I got back, but no!

The laptop was in use by its owner, so I went back to the simpler digital camera and adapter thing but on the new telescope. The moon looked great through the newer optics (it had been "new" when I first got this telescope). It was interesting to watch the heat haze and atmospheric ripples despite how cold my feet were feeling. It shows up quite well in this clip, and you can hear the wind too occasionally.



I got some reasonable pictures from this after a bit of stacking.





I also tried Mars again - but the results really weren't much better than before. Then the haze started to come in and I decided to go in a warm up my feet.