New World Datsuns...

It's amazing how you don't really notice the stars until you get away from civilization and can actually see them. Not far south of me is a pretty famous star gazing location. It really struck me how vivid the stars are here on a dark night. On the occasions where I leave at 3 or 4am for a job it's pretty incredible.

When it is that dark out the stars can make it light out, maybe not cast a shadow like the moon, but pretty bright.
That reminds me of all the times I launched my hang glider at night when the conditions were right and there was a full moon or almost a full moon, I would shadow bomb all the people around the camp fire, then a few seconds later I could hear everyone around the camp fire screaming, we used to then strafe everyone around the camp fire when landing, someone took a photo of my feet going by about 6 feet off the ground, the problem I had with that was when the flash went off I was blinded and I had to land maybe 5 seconds later, I could not see a thing but still successfully landed.
We did some pretty stupid things back then(1990s), never would we strafe people that close during the day, it was considered dangerous, but at night only the experienced(stupid) few......................................

One thing I definitely want to see with my own eyes before I go is the Milky Way and not in a picture like this


In 2017 we drove up to Athens, TN to watch the total solar eclipse. I highly recommend doing that if you ever get the chance. It’s odd to hear frogs and crickets at 2:30 in the afternoon because in gets dark.


Crappy phone pics don’t do it justice.

That happened right after I moved here. We were in the belt and it was weird.

I was on a tile roof cleaning it during that last total eclipse, everything became a funny weird color where I was at(not total eclipse).
All you need to do to see that first photo yourself is to go out into the middle of nowhere on a clear day/night in the high desert and spend the night out there without sleeping.
I have seen something like that in the Sierra Nevada's near Bishop CA when on a hang gliding trip, there are more stars than one can count, there is a camp ground up near Mt Whitney that is over 10,000 above sea level near Lone Pine CA, there is also a hang gliding launch off the road at a place called Horseshoe Meadows 3/4s of the way up that road to the camp ground, a couple pilots have flown nearly 200 miles off that launch into the flat lands of Nevada, I never had a good flight off that launch, conditions were never right, but I had some scary rough flights from there that were not very far mileage wise.

OK, so today I visited with my neighbor during his garage sale which is not good, I now have more crescent wrenches, vice grips, and a bunch other tools, I have 7 or 8 dollars into them.



I also added another row of strawberries to my garden, the new row is the left one.



I also changed the piping I am using for watering, instead of PVC pipe I used some polyethylene pipe I have had around here for over 15 years, I used big nails to hold it in position and likely will be able to remove the nails next year after it gets used to being straight, then after the pipe was in position I drilled a hole for every plant, it worked so good I did it to the other row and removed the PVC I was using to water that row.



This is what that row looked like with the PVC watering setup, it worked alright, but the new way works way better.

Nice , love our poly drip irrigation pipe/emitters/bubblers.

You can see every plant getting watered in that third photo, I turned the water on to see if I could get a photo, I just drilled a hole, I can only have around 22/23 holes before I start losing pressure on the high end, the high end is where I took the 2nd photo of the new row, it's on a timer now.

I took the telescope out this evening, it took at least 15 minutes to aim and find Jupiter with 4 moons tonight, it took another 15 minutes to find Saturn, if I can get my eye in just the right spot in the eye piece I can barely see Saturn's rings, that's my second planet I have found, it is kinda frustrating trying to aim this telescope, they are the two planets just above the moon, Saturn is on the left side, it looks like a star to me, Jupiter is a lot bigger to the naked eye.

As time goes by my garden and the way I water the plants changes as better ideas comes along, I removed the PVC watering system from my Blueberry plants in the back yard(5 plants) and made another Polyethylene system, I dug out around the bases of the plants and made circles like craters and drilled 4 holes in the pipe for each crater, I have it set to water for 3 minutes twice a day, sorry but I waited too long to take the photo and it got dark.



I then used 3 of the rings I made a while back that I drilled 5 holes in each ring and I put them around the bases of the 3 blueberry plants in my front planter, I used only two tee fittings to integrate the rings into the feed hose and set it up on an automatic timer, I will eventually make craters around the bases of these 3 plants also, I just didn't want to do it when it is 80+ degrees in direct sun.



Not really motivated lately to work on my Datsuns lately.

Hey you can’t eat trucks. Do what you enjoy, we’ll keep reading.

Well I got my Laser Collimator yesterday afternoon for the telescope, that was a bad thing, by the time I went to bed I thought I had ruined the telescope, I had that telescope apart so many times trying to figure out what they were talking about in the directions on how to use the laser to calibrate the telescope, but things did not make sense to me in the directions, I could not get the laser to do what they were talking about, when I took it outside and tried to focus on a planet or even the moon it was blurry, I gave up for the night and went to bed at 2pm.

In the photo below I took a photo of the inside of the telescope, you can see the camera in the reflection, you can also see that white donut in the center of the mirror, I took it apart, cleaned the mirror the best I could and put that donut there as per directions, that area of the mirror is not used when using the telescope, but it is used when Collimating/calibrating the telescope.



OK, so I started by finding other directions for using a Laser Collimator, directions that went into more detail explaining what every piece is and what it is for, there are 3 things that all have to align, the eyepiece, the 90 degree small mirror that aims the eyepiece at the center of the main mirror, and the primary(large) mirror, first you remove the eyepiece and look down the hole at the small mirror, then to stop unwanted reflections from the large mirror I put this piece of paper with a hole in the middle over the large mirror as per directions.



OK, so your supposed to center the small mirror in the eyepiece hole, well that hole is too large, I made a sight tube by using a socket that fit in the eyepiece hole and a valve guide, and I then centered the that hole in the piece of paper covering the large mirror using the sight tube, then I pull it out and look down the big eyepiece hole and see if the small mirror is still centered, it is a pain in the ass, you have to keep doing it over and over until you think you have that small 90 degree mirror in the center.

Here is the socket with valve guide centered in it and a closer photo where you can see thru the center of it.





And here is another photo of the inside of the telescope, you can see the small mirror just above the donut and a piece of glass reflected in that mirror, that is in the tube going out the side of the telescope where the eyepiece mounts.



Next I installed the laser in the eyepiece hole and turned it on, now there are more steps, when I was centering the eye piece in the small mirror I have 3 screws to do that with, well them 3 screws also center the laser in the center of the large primary mirror, so I spent time centering that eye piece in the small mirror just to now use the screws again to center the laser on the large mirror???, anyway that is what it said to do, so I centered the laser and hoped the eye piece would still be centered, photo of the laser with the bullseye.



And the laser centered on the donut inside the telescope.



Now to adjust the large mirror which involves the bullseye, this I could not get the laser to do yesterday, I started turning screws blindly and all of a sudden it was there right in front of me, the red circle on the edge of the bullseye, I could not find it yesterday, here is a photo of it centered on the bullseye, I will not know if I succeeded till tonight if it is clear enough.

I forgot, I made this yesterday, I drilled 20 holes in it, put ends on it, and now can water small areas without splashing muddy water everywhere.

So after I did the Collimator(calibration) thing on the telescope and took it outside that evening it was not possible to focus as crisp as it was before, so today I went thru it all again this morning, it took me as long to do it this second time without taking it apart as it took me yesterday to take it apart and put it back together several times and calibrate it, I kept having to start over, mostly it had to do with the small 90 degree mirror being centered, I could not see the 3 tabs they were talking about until I moved the small mirror deeper into the telescope which took me a few hours to figure out, then adjusting the main mirror took a while also, kept having to start over.
I took it outside this evening and it is clearer than it was when I brought it home, I could clearly see 4 moons on one side of Jupiter, and I could clearly see the space between the planet Saturn and the rings, it was windy and cloudy so it was hit and miss for a while, but now I shall wait for the new eyepieces I have coming to see the planets closer/better, I guess I didn't ruin it. LOL

I also got the small target scope aimed right now and I can find what I am trying to find within a few minutes if I am lucky, 5 minutes max.
Another thing I figured out was how to set the telescope up to have one knob control up and down and the other knob to control side to side, all this time it was controlled at angles like a big "X", it was hard to find anything that way.

It's a clear night and I tried looking at a few other stars and all I could see is white/blue light, lost interest fast and they were brighter than Saturn.
I looked at Jupiter and only 3 moons tonight, but I could see(barely) stripes on the planet, I can hardly wait for an eyepiece set at 10mm to see more detail as it likely will be appear to be 100 to 200 percent larger in the eyepiece, how clear it will be is yet to be determined, I would really like to get a better look at Saturn.
If this works out I may get that eyepiece that is made to plug into the computer or TV(needs USB port) so I can look at the screen instead of thru the eyepiece and take photos so you guys can see what I see, I believe I could see better on a screen if it is sharp/clear/not grainy, they also make an electronic eyepiece camera for under $15.00 shipped but I will have to learn more about that stuff before I buy so I know what to buy, I am not going to buy a computer for this telescope, maybe one will plug into my digital camera.

I made myself a setup to take photos of what I see in the telescope with my cheap Sony digital camera, this is what I made.






This was my first good photo below.



It didn't appear to get any better as a half hour went by, focusing it is the hard part as the photo is so small in the camera screen, I deleted more photos than I kept.







It took me a couple hours to make this and take the photos, the hard part was getting the camera the right length away from the eyepiece, I am going to move it an eighth inch closer and take some test photos again.

OK, I did more experimenting, I took it down to the entrance of my street and focused on trees maybe a mile away, but there is an issue, hot air rising from the ground makes all the photos fuzzy, when I look thru the lens I can see the waves of air rising, here is a photo of the street I am pointed down, there is a "V" shape in the trees, I am pointed at the trees in the bottom of the "V" in the center of the road as they are the farthest away.



Here are the trees



I then learned I can use the telephoto lens on the camera and get rid of the circle image, this tree is this first photo with the fir cones near the top, I am trying to focus on the fir cones.



Here it is when I use the telephoto on the camera(no circle image), still having issues with focusing the telescope when using the telephoto, but I have had that issue with all the photos, it could be because of pressing the trigger on the camera makes it move, hot air rising, or both.





I want to try this tonight when I look at the planets Jupiter and Saturn, I hope it is not cloudy, it rained last night.

I did some more reading and it appears my first search on the telescope I have(searched it before I bought it) was a bit off target, it appears it is a cheap department store telescope and nearly impossible to Collimate/calibrate, and that is likely why I was having so much trouble dealing with it, it is not the reason the photos I took today are so fuzzy, that was because of other things like me touching the camera to take the photo and the heat from the ground rising, also me trying to focus on things that are way too close, and I am trying to do something that the telescope was not made to do in the first place, especially the way I am doing it, the moon was crystal clear the last time I looked at it.
I will see how things go with this telescope for a while and see if I want to upgrade like the guy I bought this from did, everything I have bought so far can go with me to a better telescope as 1.25" eyepieces are a common size, I am still going to try and get a photo tonight if I can.
If I cannot get a clear image of Jupiter and Saturn with a 12mm eyepiece or the Barlow lens I have coming I will decide if an upgraded telescope is even worth chasing, I have had a lot of time on my hands lately and I don't see myself having a lot of work to keep me busy anymore, just small jobs in the spring and fall, so looking for new stuff to keep me entertained as time goes by.

Well I took a couple photos, but one cannot tell what it is, I will wait for the other lenses I have coming.



Sometimes I think my eyes are the issue, I can see clearly for a moment and then it looks like the lens has a dirty spot or I breathed on it and fogged it up briefly, it really is not that clear tonight either, the sky is not filled with stars, only the bright ones are easy to see but I could see all 4 moons.

Utah , was the last great place with a clearest evening sky i can remember. It was a great night for amateur star gazing during the summer a couple years back.

When I was a kid(50 years ago, I was around 13/14 years old) my friend and I road are bicycles to a place called Vancouver Lake and spent the night, it was very dark there and likely still is, but last time I went out to that area there were a lot of homeless camps, there are likely way more homeless there now, otherwise I would go there.
This telescope will have to perform better before I will make a trip to a high place, I know of a park out of the city limits and away from the city lights, but it might be closed/gated at night, we had a Datsun meet there maybe 5 or 6 years ago.
I need to receive the eyepieces I have bought, this 20mm eyepiece is not working out, it is good for aiming the telescope to the point where I can change eyepieces and still be able to find the planet, but to actually see details I need to look at the Moon with that eyepiece.