Space is Really Cold and Why Few Pictures of Me on this Blog

Friday night turned out to be a clear night, excellent for telescope viewing. I set up the scope on the front porch of the Cabin and aimed it at the first subject in the sky at dusk; Venus. I went back inside and waited another hour until the sky became completely dark. Once it was dark and I saw the sky was still clear, I moved the telescope to a spot on the driveway away from the lights of the cabin and tried calibrating the computerized object finder that I had problems with a few times before. This time it calibrated on the first attempt, and I was ready to explore the Universe. It's a good thing it calibrated fast, because when it is dark and clear up north you become part of Space. Or in other words, it is FRICKING FREEZING COLD! But that along with the dark moonless night makes it perfect to observe deep space objects. The Object Finder has an option to 'tour the night sky'. I observed about six different objects before the LCD screen was freezing up and getting difficult to read in the 8 degree temps. That was fine though, since my fingers and toes froze about 5 minutes earlier. The most impressive object was the Orion Nebula, I was surprised at how well it looked in the telescope, filling the complete field of view. I went inside for another half hour to wait until Saturn rose over the hill to the east, and then eventually Comet Lulin. Once back out, I commanded the Object Finder to locate Saturn for me. The screen was really cold and hard to read, but it displayed exactly where it was. It was a nice clear steady view of Saturn and its' rings. I picked out a few other objects to view while waiting around for Lulin to rise above the hill to the East, but the clouds moved in and my hands lost feeling before it became visible. All in all, it was a very good night with the scope.

Biggest lesson learned that night - don't exhale when your using the telescope. With one exhale you can fog the sighting scope, eyepiece, and your glasses all at once. It's really cold standing around waiting for the fog to clear from all that freezing cold glass!

Now I'd like to clear up something about the pictures of me in this blog. My dear wife Diane made a comment to me on my pictures when she came down to Arizona a couple weeks ago. She asked me 'John, your wearing the same Packer sweatshirt in all the pictures of you posted on the blog. Don't you ever change your clothes?' So if anybody else thought that, first, you shouldn't be paying that close of attention. Your most likely at work and shouldn't be spending time checking out what some old retired guy is wearing. Second, I have three Packer sweatshirts, two of which I packed for the trip. So I do change my clothes, and I did laundry three times on the trip, so back off. Geez, I checked all the pictures, and in many of them I was wearing my black jacket. That is why I don't like to many pictures of me floating around, I always end up defending myself.