Showing Mum the Moon

The blog has been quiet for about a month or so. To be honest, I've had very little time to get the scopes out lately due to work, family life, Thanksgiving etc. The weather has also been lame!

Tonight was a cold, clear night. I set up the LX200 to start experimenting with the Toucam I purchased a couple of months ago (and have, thus far, spent very little time working with it). Anyway, I targeted the moon and Mars. I'll process the images tomorrow. (Although a quick lunar closeup can be found to the left)

Anyway, I was just out in the front yard, and the laptop was well within range of the wifi hub in my home. So, I had a thought. I got onto instant messenger and found mum (in Australia) online. I called her, just to get her attention, and then started a webcam chat, using the Toucam as the camera for the chat itself. Instead of seeing my wonderful face (sarcasm) she got to see the face of the moon, in quite fantastic detail! Through the Toucam and the internet connection between us, she sat there in her living room on the other side of the world while I gave her what was pretty close to a personal guided tour of the moon! I carefully slewed from one lunar region to the next, pointing out specific craters etc. and she was quite stunned. Because of the microphone on the camera itself, she could also hear my scope's drive motors slewing here and there.

It was quite a neat experience and Mum was really quite thrilled with it. Unfortunately, Dad wasn't home from work yet so he missed out. But I'll try and set something up over the weekend for him to see as well!