A Great New Resource and a Long Stoppage

 

A ghostly face graces the crescent moon

        2022 moved on with me getting outside as much as possible. My backyard became the go-to spot after a few tries at the end of my driveway looking west. There was just too much traffic, sunset took too long and the house lights mandated by our HOA messed with my night vision. Occasionally my neighbors ran their back porch light, but I had been able to work around that. 

        Back in my days as a serious musician, there was a shop I would frequent called Guitar Junkyard. The owner ran it as a store/museum/repair/instruction location. The man had everything and what he didn't have he could fashion something or get it with no fuss. I found his counterpart with astronomy, a place called Stellar Vision (https://stellarvisiontucson.com/). An unassuming place in a light industrial zone of the south end of Tucson. The guy runs it in a similar fashion the guitar place did. There's another place in town which is a much shorter drive, but they are way overpriced and I feel a kind of customer loyalty to Stellar Vision. 

        One piece of advice he gave me during my first visit was to be patient and slow down. He must have sensed something, because I do have this sense of urgency. It's like if I don't see these things I will never see them again. I think part of that might come from the media's tendency to blow their horn too loud about every celestial event. It is important to take your time and maybe not cram every viewing session with an unrealistic number of goals. 

        In mid-April, I managed to get a view of The Great Hercules Cluster. There is a picture, but it didn't turn out well. I also managed to avoid getting stung by one of the denizens of our desert: 

        I was seated and jotting down some notes when I happened to look down and saw this making a beeline for my right foot. For some reason, the red flashlight stopped the little guy in his tracks. Long enough for me to get a heavy rubber sandal and send him on his way. I made a note to not go our barefoot anymore!

        With one exception, the end of April also meant the end of my telescoping sessions for a while. Our home went under a major renovation which brought contractors and dust all over the house. So I moved the scope into one of the rooms where work wasn't being performed and covered it with a sheet because of the dust. We were looking at probably July before work would be done and although I missed the stars, I felt better keeping the scope out of harm's way. 

        The one exception was a total lunar eclipse which took place the night of May 15th. It was one of those supermoons, the eclipse took place fairly early in the evening and it was a quick process eclipse-wise. I almost didn't bother with it, but my brother was in from Springfield with his wife and he urged me to at lease watch what was going on. So I dug the scope out and got some really cool pictures: 

Lunar eclipse at totality

        This shot was used by the local TV meteorologist during her morning report. Hey, I made it to TV!

        When the remodel ended in July, I still wasn't able to go out much. July in this part of Arizona means the summer monsoon, and we were having a bigger than normal one. If it wasn't rainy, it was always at least too overcast to see anything. Except when the moon was fairly prominent, though. So I discovered the Lunar 100 Challenge, where you look for and log 100 lunar features. It's been a good way to observe and learn about the moon on a more granular level. And it is a challenge, after a point, many of the objects are small and can only be viewed at certain partial phases. 

        Looking through my photos, it looks like it was the end of August before things picked up a little. At least it was the first visual record since April of something other than the moon. Looking through my log, there was only a few outings with no pictures. On Aug 30, I was able to get out and use the "Orion" book to track down M17, AKA the Swan or Omega Nebula: 

        My log tells me there was a significant outing in June which bears some discussion. This involved a new piece of gear and a change in viewing hours. But we'll wait until the next installment to pick that up. 

"That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam." Carl Sagan discussing the image of Earth taken by Voyager 1 from 3.7 billion miles away.