End of September into October is the time when I am at my minimum bodyweight in the yearly cycle. This Summer had been very weird in terms of inconsistent activities and I am still at my Winter weight. Can’t imagine myself next March after putting on 5 more lbs through Winter.
Don’t know why @NPR had to cancel @MorningEdition for the morbid coverage of the Queen’s funeral? Ruined my Monday morning commute. We have been hearing about the Queen for 10 days now. Enough already!
As the next step of his driver’s training, took my son driving on an interstate highway (I-95). We were both a little anxious but, he did very well with maintaining the speed and navigating the entrance and exit ramps.
Another achievement unlocked!!!
My bicycle rides over the last ~10 years. For comparison the circumference of the Earth is ~25000 miles.
New astrophoto posted.
Pelican nebula - Sep2022
Pelican nebula (IC 5070) is located in Cygnus constellation, right next to the North American nebula. This emission nebula is about 1800 light years away and is 30 light years across. In this image I was struck by the incredible detail that can be seen in the silhouetted dark dust regions.
Really happy with how well the current setup is working. For auto guiding, the RMS error is consistently less than 1 arc second. This makes nice round pin-point stars even with 5 minute long exposures. The narrowband L-eXtreme filter performs very well with light suppression.
Telescope: William Optics Zenithstar 61; focal length 360mm
Optolong L-eXtreme narrowband filter
Camera: ZWO ASI533MC-pro, cooled to -10C
5 minute exposures with auto guiding; total exposure of 3 hours;
used dark, flat, bias calibration frames
Processed in SIRIL and PhotoShop
Got a bivalent Covid booster and flu shot at Costco pharmacy. There was a lot of drama with understaffed pharmacy and a highly strung customer who was making everyone uncomfortable and made that poor pharmacist cry. Wait was longer than expected but there was entertainment.
Was up till late last night capturing 3 hours of exposures of Pelican nebula. Had a tough time coming to work this morning because I just wanted to stay home and finish processing those images. Oh well! It will have to wait till later in the day.
Ran a 5K after a long time - almost after one year. Happy that I could do it in 35 minutes. Hope to do some more runs when the weather is nice and cool this fall.
Perseid meteor showers - Aug 2022
On the night of Aug 13th, set up my camera to capture Perseid meteor showers. Over 5 hours, caught 3 meteors and about 2 hours of continuous cloudless sky to make a startrails image.
Nikon Z6; Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8; 60 sec
Challenge fatigue
In 2021, I bicycled 4400 miles and decided set up the same target for 2022. I have closed the activity rings on my Apple Watch for more than 500 consecutive days. I try to complete the monthly challenge that Apple fitness throws at me. This month it is 75 minutes of exercise per day. Now there will be the Fall challenge at work to count steps and reach a certain goal in 12 or 15 weeks. It feels like I am slowly getting tired of all these challenges. It is good to have these goals to keep me motivated to exercise but it is coming to a point where these challenges are becoming a burden and are taking over my life. One of these days, I am just going to shut down all the apps, throw my Apple Watch in a drawer and stop participating any in these challenges.
Here are all the winners from last night’s Emmy awards. Only show on this list that I have watched is “Ted Lasso” and it was good. The other show that I watched last year was “only murders in the building” and liked it a lot. It didn’t get any awards.
Gas prices have come down even in Connecticut where the prices are always above National average. Even with this, the interest rates will be going up at the fed meeting next week. That is not a bad news for savers.
Heart nebula - Sep 2022
The Heart nebula (IC1805) lies about 7500 light years away in the Perseus arm of our galaxy. It is an emission nebula and gets this red color from all the radiation it receives from the star cluster (Melotte 15) in the middle of the picture.
Cropped photo showing details of dark dust clouds in the nebula.
Telescope: William Optics Zenithstar 61; focal length 360mm
Optolong L-eXtreme narrowband filter
Camera: ZWO ASI533MC-pro, cooled to -10C
5 minute exposures with auto guiding; total exposure of 5 hours;
used dark, flat, bias calibration frames
Processed in SIRIL and PhotoShop
Yesterday was the first Connecticut Youth Symphony rehearsal for my son. After drop-off, we went for lunch at Mécha Noodle Bar in West Hartford. Loved the decor here and ramen was good too. Looks like we will be lunching at various restaurants in this area over the next year.
A freezer at work needed to be defrosted. While cleaning it out, found some samples that were dated from 1994 - the time when I was still in grad school. I guess people who retired and left in the last few years didn’t bother to clean out this freezer.
Cropped photo of the Heart nebula that I had posted a couple of days ago. I really liked how all the detail in the dark nebula showed up here nicely.
Getting Shingles is just horrible as I have learnt from my brother-in-law’s experience. He was sick for many months. When my doctor recommended the vaccine (Shingrix) at my physical, I took it right away. It is supposed to make you sick for a couple of days. I am bracing for it.
Because of the drought in this area, it seemed like many trees had given up on growing season and had gone into leaf shedding mode already. I hope this nice soaking rain for the last couple of days is making all these trees a little bit happier.
Tried to watch a movie called “RRR”. In about 20 minutes, I was on the floor in a fetal position. Couldn’t take it any more.