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Maybe there is hope for me
I discovered a few days ago there was going to be a rare occurrence of a transit of Titan across Saturn last night. Locally it started around 8:30 so our plans were to set up the telescope to watch from around that time. Unfortunately the skies weren’t at all clear when the time neared so we opted not to waste our time. Instead the Scientist and I watched the episode of Good News Week we had recorded Monday night before he had to be off to bed.
Our washing machine was finally returned yesterday and I finally had some clean clothes to hang out and did so after the Scientist had gone to sleep. I had a dilemma when I realised the skies had cleared considerably because I have never made use of the telescope on my own and our expert was in bed. I decided to have a go and take the telescope out. It’s a pretty big contraption but I managed to shuffle my way out with it with little ado, aside from scraping my foot on the bricks outside.
Although I’ve watched the Scientist set everything up before, I felt completely clueless once I got out there. I did, of course, know enough to take off the big cover to the reflector but then I was a bit stumped. But wait, the barrel was turned the wrong way and the scope and lens holder were rendered rather useless on the underside. First thing was to turn it around and so I accomplished my second act of bravery with expensive equipment for the night. (Of course this morning I realised that I didn’t need to turn it over but to turn the platform and flip it the opposite direction so the effort wasn’t needed. Bad brain!) The lenses were all in their holders along the side of the Dobsonian mount but how to get one onto the contraption? I thought more about this and remembered to remove the caps from the finder scope which was a bit of a start. Of course I really didn’t know where to find Saturn in the night sky. I had a general idea of where we’d seen it before and remembered it being bright enough to be distinguished from some other objects in the sky. I came inside to start up Stellarium on the computer and Lego Lover soon joined me outside in our search of the skies.
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Bits and pieces
Just some bits and pieces :
- New Year’s Eve was relatively quiet at our house. We were invited to a party this year but didnt go. The boys wouldn’t have coped, which would have made it rather difficult for the Scientist or I to enjoy ourselves. Earlier in the evening we took the telescope out and looked at the moon and Venus. It made for some interesting viewing and Lego Lover had a ball with it. Later we spent a lot of time playing video games. Just before midnight we switched to the television to see the fireworks in Sydney and we drank sparkling grape juice at midnight.
- Last Tuesday we were startled in the middle of the day by a loud noise that sounded to me a bit like the car hitting the fence across the street a few years ago. About thirty seconds later we heard a car screeching away. I had a quick look out our side door and noted nothing out of the ordinary but later on I discovered what had happened. We have a roundabout (traffic circle)Â near us and a car must have been going around it too quickly. Presumably the driver lost control and went right through the fence of our back neighbours and hit their clothes hoist, which went through the back fence through to our yard. It’s a small hole, in one of the panels that was replaced after a storm damage last year. We don’t know whether it can be repaired or will have to be replaced as yet. This damage is quite unlucky for our neighbours who now have a rather huge area of fence that is broken. But they were lucky that the vehicle hit the fence where it did because the fence runs just along the side of the house and it easily could have been the building that was hit.
- The Scientist and I are again thinking about taking a cruise, either at the end of this year or early next year. There’s one on offer right now for a reasonable price that goes from either Fremantle to Adelaide or vice versa. The only hitch is we’d have to fly one way and Lego Lover is terrified of that possibility. We do have the alternative of taking the Indian Pacific one way but I’m not sure if it will be as cost-effective as flying.
- Lego Lover got a new mattress at the beginning of the month. He’s been using the same one for many years now and it’s not terribly supportive for a bigger kids so we got a new one that hopefully will last well into his teen years.
- We have several upcoming appointments in the near future with two this week, one for each of the boys. Otherwise our schedule is pretty empty. I’m hoping to get together with my friend K and her kids some time soon but these days we find it harder to coordinate our schedules than we did when the kids were younger.
- I’ve seen some really interesting programs on television lately, mostly screening on ABC1 or ABC2, as I recall. It’s nice to have such wonderful programming in the midst of our generally listless summer programming on the commercial channels. New Year’s night was especially memorable with:Â The Story of 1, presented by Terry Jones and tracing the history of numbers; Destiny in Alice, about the large lesbian community in Alice Springs and presented by mock anthropologist, “Destiny Attenborough”; and Happy News Year which presented a less conventional look at news events of 2008, presented by The Chasers’ Chris Taylor. All were entertaining, yet informative programs.
- Our washing machine requires a repair. We have an LG front loader and it started making thunderous noise while spinning the other day along with shreds of rubber showing up in the finished laundry. Repairers won’t be here until the 20th. We used my MIL’s machine on Saturday while there for a family lunch but she lives too far to make it time, cost or fuel efficient to use that machine. I suppose a laundromat visit will feature into this week along with some handwashing.