Long Time No Post

It's been about two weeks since my last post, so I'll do a few tonight. I've got more stuff to share, so maybe I can get to it over the holidays. Life gets busy in December, even here on Bonaire. Then Sandra and I have been pretty sick for about a week, yuck.

But we're both feeling much better now. I might even venture out on an easy bike ride tomorrow. I think it will take me a couple weeks to get back up to speed though.

I sold all my Minolta camera gear on eBay since my last post. My six auctions ended late on a Sunday night, everyone paid promptly, and my dad graciously packed and shipped the stuff right away. By the Friday, everyone had received their goodies. The guy who won my Maxxum 28/2 lens was particularly happy. I'm not surprised. The 28/2 produced cleaner star shapes in my astro photos at F2.8 than my Canon 24/2.8 does at F4! The Maxxum 100/2.8 macro was also better wide open at F2.8 than my Canon 85/1.8 is at F2.8. Bob Lassiter has Canon's 100/2.8 macro, and he says that I can try it out under the stars some time.

I saw the International Space Station pass right in front of the Sun on Saturday morning. I tried to get set up to image it with my telescope, solar filter, lap top computer, and web cam, but didn't get it all hooked up and functioning in time. Now I'm usually so busy trying to get pictures that I don't even see the event at all. Yesterday was a different story and I am happy to report that the ISS looked really great in my ETX 90 and 26mm eyepiece as it zoomed across the Sun's disk.

I was out this evening taking some pictures of the beautiful Full Moon / Mars pairing and saw the ISS pass by at about 18:55. It was too hazy to get any useful pictures of the ISS but it was fun to see that it was right on schedule, ha-ha. The ISS will be also be visible, here on Bonaire, a couple more evenings this week according to CalSky dot com. As I've mentioned before, the Calsky and Heavens-Above Web sites are worth their weight in gold if you want to know what is going on in the night sky at your location.