Odds and Ends

Not much time for getting any scopes out recently. I did, however, get my Milburn wedge repaired this evening. Thanks to Ken Milburn himself (the chap who designed and still builds them to order), I got hold of the spare part I needed to repair it, and installed it quite easily. Now I am ready to get back into some scope-based astrophotography! I am planning a trip this weekend, weather-permitting, to a dark sky site to try another Sword of Orion image now that it is getting quite high up in the sky at a decent hour. I am pursuing that one nice, sharp, clear shot of it...

Otherwise, I have been messing around with long exposure star trail imaging. I won't post anything just yet, but I am making good progress with it and the results are nifty. Will post an image once I take something really fancy-schmancy!!!

In other news:

a. This blog was recognized as one of the top 100 Astronomy and Space blogs by the website listed below -

http://www.find-schools-online.com/blog/2008/top-100-space-and-astronomy-blogs/

I track visitors to the blog and noticed that recently a ton of folks have been coming to visit from lands far and wide. It's nice to get some recognition and I wanted to take the opportunity here to thank people for dropping in. If you need coverage of a specific topic you can't find in the blog, let me know - leave a comment!

b. Speaking of recognition, an image I took of an Australian Kookaburra during my last visit to Melbourne was selected to appear in a Melbourne travel guide!! I know it's not an astro image, but I am chuffed nonetheless. It was one of those rare moments where the subject was perfectly positioned and I had my sh*t together with a camera :-) One day I will hopefully make Astronomy Picture Of the Day, but in the meantime this will do nicely! The picture is below, just for fun!