I bought an iOptron Skytracker Pro after Christmas from Ontario Telescope & Accessories, but since then the viewing conditions in Ottawa have sucked. This evening was one of a very small handful of nights this month where you could actually see the stars. I headed out into the cold and set up at the Deschênes Rapids Lookout along the Sir John A MacDonald Parkway. Not the ideal viewing location because of the light pollution, but good enough for what I wanted to do. (more…)

I had a marketing call from a credit card company whose card I have the other day. They wanted to tell me about an offer that was tailored specifically for me. But before they could tell me about it, they wanted me to confirm my postal code.

I said “uh, no”.

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So, a couple of days ago I posted an apology to astronomers in this part of the world because I had cursed the weather by having ordered a new astronomy toy. Well, a couple of days ago, I ordered a tripod for my new toy and now the viewing conditions for the foreseeable future look like this:

The line of particular interest is the “Seeing” line. White and grey boxes are bad. And the “Transparency” line is pretty much solid white, so that sucks, too.

I think I’m done buying astronomy bits for a while, mostly because it appears there’s no point because I’ll never get to use them. That should cause the weather to clear up sometime by the end of the month.

Once again, my apologies to the astronomers in this part of the world. I’m sorry.

Hmm… I could use a dew heater. (Does anyone want to pay me to not buy a dew heater and thus not curse the weather further?)

I appear to owe the astronomy community an apology.

Everytime I buy something related to astronomy (e.g., telescope, filters, etc.) the weather turns to crap and noone can see the stars. The length of time this goes on for seems to be directly related to the amount of money I spent on the astronomy stuff.

Just after Christmas, I picked up an iOptron Skytracker Pro, so we probaby won’t see the the stars anytime soon.

I’m sorry.