Fire cancels our scheduled viewing on the Mt Wilson 60-inch, connection between gravity and time, autoguider cable hookup snafu, mount motor drive failure leaves scope pointed at Polaris and one way to get a lift above the rooftop

Greetings from Palmia Observatory

Well this week still had a bit of disappointment about not being able to do any observing at the 60-inch telescope on Mt. Wilson, so Resident Astronomer Peggy and I started dreaming about signing up for a night of observing at Kitt Peak in Tucson.  Now that will be a little more expensive, but at least

Kip Thorne gravity wave lectures, quantum spin with margarita spin, getting lightcurves for eclipsing binary Sheliak, and fire cancels Mt Wilson 60-inch telescope viewing

Greetings from Palmia Observatory

Most of this week was spent catching up on studying general relativity and gravity wave physics.  It has been slow going trying to understand this stuff, but I found a

Gravity wavestudy sessions, trying new mount for pointing at dim objects using RA and Dec and using 600mm camera views of Albiereo, M57 and Sheliak in preparation of practicing for AAVSO observation of variable stars

Well, this week, in between gravitational wave study sessions, has been able to gather a few astro photos and begin the quality control check out of the new telescope mount.  As I've mentioned previously my goal of collecting light curve data from eclipsing binaries and other variable stars is now able to move forward.  Since some of the target stars are

Trying out new lightweight alt/az tracking mount, using just 600mm telephoto for Saturn and Mizar and comparing software enhancement differences

Greetings from Palmia Observatory

Well, the night clouds have been arriving about a couple of hours before midnight, so that meant a chance to get in some preliminary testing of this new Ioptron, self-aligning mount.

As you probably already know, I have been experimenting with several products to get quicker alignments because, well, I might as well just say it, I'm kind of lazy when it comes

to

Exploring El Dorado Illinois as possible Eclipse 2017 viewing site, Reading "Gravity from the ground up", Catching Lighning Bugs, Happy 4th of July!

Well, we're back in SoCal now after visiting relatives, Resident Astronomer Peggy's brother, Don in rural southern Illinois in the little town of El Dorado.  Now it turns out that that location is on the total eclipse path for the August 2017 eclipse.  So, we had to check out where