Category Archives: Astronomy

July 1st, what? We’re opening escrow? Gee, it’s a great house, I’m glad that The Long Suffering Wife loves it, as do I, but really?! A 21-day escrow?

August 1st, we’ve been in here eleven days and all is still pretty much chaos, boxes almost everywhere, and yet… There’s a lot more order and organization that there was after the previous move, seven years ago. I still have to empty the rest of the contents of the two PODS storage units, but that’s progress for another day. Today I finished emptying out the second UHaul truck of this week. While my hands and arms and legs and back and butt and shoulders are all pretty much one giant cramp 24/7/365, I am feeling a certain sense of accomplishment. Despite my current age and condition (i.e., “I am WAAAAAY too old for this shit!”) it is getting done.

And the sky here! Instead of having a street light right in front of the house and then about every third house all up and down the street and being in the middle of a brightly lit metropolitan area that’s in the top twenty or so on the planet, we have just two, one at each end of our cul-de-sac, at least three or four houses away. And our street and subdivision is located in an area that’s about 1/20 as densely populated as Los Angeles. As a result, YOU CAN SEE THE STARS! It’s not a “Bortle 1” location by any means, but a Bortle 6.4 location is tons better than a Bortle 8.4 location, and from here Bortle 4 locations are less than an hour’s drive away.

Just with my cell phone camera, looking out my front door toward the southwest tonight, the quarter Moon was setting over the palm tree, and to the left above the garage room you can clearly see the stars at the “head” of Scorpius. (Go ahead, click on the image, I’m giving you the uncompressed file and it’s amazing!)

Antares is the brightest star (second from the left edge) with the “head” coming down vertically to the right near the center of this image. (Click! Click! See all of the detail!)

Wait until I get my telescope put back together. (“Funny” story there with the movers…)

I missed posting last night. It’s called “total exhaustion,” and “Paul can’t estimate how long packing and moving will take within an order of magnitude!”

Here’s the crescent moon tonight.

I’ll bet it looks amazing from our new house in the High Desert, but I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see. I’m obviously still at the old house, packing yet another truck full of stuff.

It’s an “adventure!!” One I wish would come to an end and let me get back to a boring routine. “Mundane” has become a short-term life goal!