Amateur backyard astronomy

I’ve been wanting one for years, but a few weeks ago I finally went out and bought myself a telescope :)

Some assembly required. (This is a Celestron Astromaster 130EQ, by the way.)

Sadly, I haven’t had the chance to do much star gazing these last few weeks — partly because I’ve been busy and partly because it’s been cloudy on almost Every. Single. Night. that I’ve been free.

To look at the stars your best bet is to go to a place with minimal light pollution (ie away from a big city) on a dark night (ie when there’s no moon). So far the most I’ve been able to do is the exact opposite: set the telescope up in my front yard on a full moon night. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Photo taken with my Google Pixel phone’s ‘night sight’ feature.

That might be worst set-up for looking at stars and nebulae, but it’s excellent if you want to look closely at the moon :)

Photo taken with my smartphone placed over the telescope’s eyepiece.

So while I haven’t yet made the most of my intermediate-level telescope, at least I’ve been able to a good look at the moon.

It’s a start.

Selfie Sunday

Selfies at a Sunday afternoon birthday with, respectively, Dr Nadia Niaz, Dr Nuzhat Lotia, and Dr Asha Bedar.

Plus one bonus ‘golden light’ selfie at sunset with Nadia :)

Blocking the sun so we can see ourselves in the phone camera.

Camouflaged neighbourhood cat

Now that is a well camouflaged Cat of Kingsville.

I saw it only two steps before we walked by it, so all I had time to do was make sure Maggie stayed close to me on her lead on the other side of my legs.

Maggie, in the meantime, didn’t notice it at all. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Blending into the dirt and and into background.

It’s a little easier to see from across the street, when it doesn’t have all that dirt and background to blend into.

But even then, given how still it was sitting, you’d miss if you weren’t actively looking out for animals as you walked your dog.

Camouflaged cat is watching you.

Cats taking the high ground

Coming back to our cats of Kingsville series, though, today we saw two cats.

This one that decided that vertical separation was better than horizontal separation as I walked Maggie down its street (Maggie sniffed the base of the tree but didn’t even register the cat’s presence).

Cat up a tree, unimpressed with the fact that I’m taking its photo.

And this one that was particularly frowny about us walking by its domain :)

Disapproving cat-on-a-post is disapproving.