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Showing posts from April, 2021

Some sketches done with an affordable 5" Tabletop Reflector

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I Picked up a Zhumell Z130 for a review. It has flaws, but for the money it's absolutely terrific. A review on AstronomySource will happen eventually. For now, here's four sketches from tonight.

A year of pandemic astronomy

Something has gone horribly wrong. But we all know that. A couple weeks ago we had a set of virtual TriStar lectures, an attempt to run the TriStar amateur astronomy conference online. It worked great, though it rather lacked the social aspect found in real-life TriStars at GTCC. One year prior to TriStar 2021, we had TriStar 2020. By then we were already beginning to see how the coronavirus disease was changing our lives. We were encouraged not to shake hands and to take extra care if we were ill, but we still had the meeting, and we still had the special Saturday observing session at the Cline Observatory. I hosted in the dome that night. Next Friday was cloudy, and by the Friday after that the WHO declared COVID-19 to be a global pandemic. There hasn't been a Cline Observatory viewing session since TriStar 2020 and as of yet none are scheduled. Prior to this, I had been volunteering at the Cline Observatory since April 7th 2017. It was nearly my 3rd anniversary of getting into