Cellarius calendar

Donna gave me an appointment calendar featuring artwork by Andreas Cellarius.



The British Library has reproduced some of his illustrations from his Celestial Atlas of Harmony.

Cellarius has visualised the Ptolemaic, Copernican, and Brahe models of the cosmos.

Beautiful artwork. I'll want to keep this calendar after 2005...

Mom gets a Telrad

I bought a Telrad from Kendrick for Mom for Xmas.



I'm looking forward to using this "zero-power" finder.

• shows three lighted target rings
• the large ring is 4° (about the same area as a finder scope)
• the small inner ring is ½° across (approx. the area seen in the telescope)
• there's a middle circle at 2°
  
• adjustable brightness control
• base mounts onto 'scope without drilling holes (double-sided tape)
  
• main unit unlocks from base for storage
• requires AA batteries
• weights 11 ounces

This is because her 'scope is without a finder. And it seems that finder scopes can be fairly expensive. I was surprised how inexpensive the Telrad is.

And it's real easy to use. Which will be an important feature for Mom.

I confess, it's really a gift to her and me! If I buy an additional mount (only), then I can use it on my 'scope too!

planet walk

We stumbled across a scaled planet walk downtown Ithaca between fast laps at the Watkins Glen race track. It was big with the outer planets being 1200 metres away.

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I learned latter it is called the Sagan Planet Walk!

thanks from SETI

I can't remember now when I started but as of 22 May 04, I've processed 132 work units for SETI@home.

I decided that since I have a couple of computers generally on all the time and connected almost full-time to the internet that I'd give some of my free cycles to the SETI search.

You (or rather your computer) can help too... Visit http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/ for more information.

slipped my brain

My sis emailed me to say that Al gave her more eyepieces for Mom's telescope. I replied the same day to this message.

But for some reason I would forget about these eyepieces until a year and a half later... Becoming an old fart with bad memory I guess.

Messier lists

I found a couple of handy lists with Messier catalog information. I downloaded a straight list and touched it up. This will be useful as a checklist, to work through. The other list I found was prepared by Don Savat and Jim Rice. Each object included a brief description. Nice. And at the end of the list, the objects were indexed by season. Very nice.