The last time I added to this irregular journal I said I was going to be working on a number of internal projects – updating floors, for example. While that’s still part of the plan, there have been a couple of adjustments to the schedule.

In particular, over the past few weeks my wallet and bank account have been suffering multiple hemorrhages as I purchased a new telescope, a dedicated astronomical camera, and a passenger van. The van is to be converted into a recreational vehicle and telescope transport. That’ll allow me to visit my daughter in California from time to time as well as travel to dark sky locations and star parties and flit about with Daniella to see parts of the continent we’ve been missing over the past few decades.. You can follow the conversion process here, and eventually some notes on astronomy and our travels will probably show up there also.

As for the telescopes, it’s been getting harder and harder to see anything worthwhile through my eyepieces, but my vision is still good enough for me to work on a screen. Last year people were kind enough to suggest I look at video astronomy, and a couple of months ago I picked up a camera. As it turned out, my old SCT wasn’t quite up to handling the large chip size on the camera I purchased, so I upgraded to a newer version of the scope which could. One more thing led to yet another more thing, and I bought a new mount. I have yet to sell the old equipment – which except for the limitation revealed by the large chip still works quite well – but sometime I’ll get around to doing something about my procrastination (but not just yet) and I’ll put them up for sale. I really have to do this – I will need to spend even more money refurbishing and equipping the van, so I have to dig up the cash. I just hate to let go…