Ketelsen West remodel....continued!

Now that we've all recovered from viewing the pictures of my colon (I can't believe I agreed to Dean posting those - the power of sedation, no doubt!)! I'm hoping we didn't lose any of our regular readers, as well as those who stop by to see what we're up to recently!

After many days of prep work, we started the painting portion of the Tucson redo today! I started with a partially peeling popcorn ceiling, that I removed. After letting the ceiling (bare drywall, mostly) dry we were able to startthe repair work. Every little scuff, nail hole, and crack needed to be filled. We had the old thermostat on the wall which I removed, and the subsequent hole to repair. Years of wear and tear can be brutal to drywall. It just takes time and patience to fix those areas and get a nice smooth surface. After sanding all of the spackle and drywall mud the other day, I did more repairs and finished sanding those areas this morning when I got home from work. Before putting finish coats of paint on ceilings or walls that have been patched, it's really necessary to put on a good coat of primer. That's even more true when painting a ceiling that was mostly bare drywall. Without primer the finish coat just soaks in, and you end up using way more paint than you really need to. So, today was "Primer Saturday"! Our housemate, Jason (a student who lives with us and takes care of the house and the cats when we are not available), was ready to start painting at 8:30am! He did the ceiling, Dean did all of the 'cut work' (painting around the edges, painting around the trim, brushing where the rollers weren't going to work), and I started on the walls. With in a couple of hours we had primed the hallways (walls and ceilings)! That was my goal for the day, as I worked last night and knew I would have to get some sleep. It's really exciting to see the transition to smooth white walls! If they had put 1 ounce less of paint in that gallon of primer, we would have run out - as it was, we used one entire gallon and got a great base to now be able to move onto the next phase. While we could have, probably, knocked out the rest of the painting this evening; it can wait another day or so.

The Patient Is Resting Comfortably...

There is nothing like a "medical procedure" to dampen your spirits. In fact, if it were not for stand up comics and the "late night" comedians treatments of colonoscopies and root canals, we would likely have fewer cancer deaths and healthier mouths. I've had both procedures and found their reputations a LOT worse than the actual event. But there was little that I could say to Melinda to reassure her when her most recent doctor visit resulted in an order for a colonoscopy. Particularly since her Mom died of colon cancer and as she was on the uphill side of 42 (I'm a good husband), it was time, and I did my best to tell her it was no big thing.


So it was scheduled for this morning... Likely the second hardest thing for her (and for the next time I get one), is that we are on the blood thinner Coumadin, which we cannot have in our systems during the exam in case they need to remove a polyp. So she had to switch to a different, injectable drug to counteract the formation of blood clots, and the abdominal injections are a lot worse than the oral pills we are both used to. And in my opinion, the worse part of the entire procedure is drinking the gallon of "cleanser" to empty you out. Following doctor's suggestions, she added lemonade flavoring and chilled it to make it easier to drink, but with that volume of icy cold beverage (2 half-gallon volumes a few hours apart), she got the shakes from hypothermia!

She didn't have much to say on the drive in this morning, and once hooked up to the IV with the requisite open-in-the-back hospital gown, I asked her if she was going to watch it on the TV, which was my favorite part of my colonoscopy 3 years ago. No, she wanted to be out, out, out and wanted no part of it... The doctor came by about then and assured her she would get the amount of drugs she needed, no more. Finally, it was time - I was told to be back in a half hour, which was barely enough time to walk to the cafeteria, have a bagel and give up on the Thursday crossword puzzle. Sure enough, 40 minutes after they wheeled her out of her cubical, I was back talking to her. Yes, she had seen some of it on TV, and while there was some discomfort, the prep was by far the worst part of the ordeal. The exam went great - only a small polyp where they took a biopsy, I don't believe they even removed it. There was also a spot of diverticulosis that was imaged for future monitoring. After a half hour in recovery, they wheeled her out to the parking lot and we enjoyed a late breakfast at Village Inn (she hadn't eaten solid food in 48 hours). She is now sleeping off the remnant anesthesia, and catching up on the sleep she missed last night.


The funniest part - as we were waiting for transport to push her wheelchair out the door, we examined a closet full of lengths of black tubes, about a centimeter in diameter and .5 to 1.5 meters (20 inches to 60 inches) long. I could see her look at them and she finally asked - "what do you suppose they are?" "How do you think they took those pretty pictures of your insides", was my reply. Her eyes got wide as she realized they were the endoscopes used - "Man, they could take out your tonsils with those!"

So that's today's story - be sure to get your colonoscopy if you are due! It is the easiest cancer to prevent with early detection, so do not put it off!

Wednesday Morning's Comet Lulin

While I'm not a morning person, I do suffer from a bit of insomnia and sometimes have a hard time getting back to sleep after a 4am bathroom visit. But these days it may be a good thing as comet 2007N3 Lulin is in prime observing position then.

Since my only shot of it was with a normal lens last Friday, was time to get it in a darker sky. Interestingly, we've been getting lots of hits as word of Lulin gets out - google has pointed lots of people to the blog wanting to see comet pictures. Unfortunately, this will not be a spectacular apparition, but will be brighter than your average comet, as it should attain naked eye visibility (barely!) in a month or so.

So this morning at 5am, I set up my little tracking mount and shot the comet with a 200mm lens (Canon XSi w/Canon 80-200 zoom at F/3.2 - stack of 10 -30 second exposures). Even with Tucson's sky glow and the high clouds that blew through, I didn't have to use imagination that I saw it in binoculars, it was definitely there, but still small and fuzzy. It was readily apparent in the camera display, but with only the 8" focal length, no details like those showing up at Spaceweather.com's gallery. With good weather in the forecast, I will need to head out towards the weekend with the 14" Celestron... Fortunately, though currently almost 100 million miles away, in 4 weeks it will be a mere 40 million miles, thus will appear about 2.5 times bigger and at least that much brighter. For those of you who want to try finding it in binoculars to the upper right of Scorpius the next few mornings, check out the Sky and Telescope article. Good hunting!

Pardon our dust....

While Dean has been doing most of the posting lately, I have been "getting ready" for my upcoming entry! Dean alluded to the home improvement project underway here, and that will be further illustrated very soon. To give you an idea of what we're doing it goes something like this:
1. Remove popcorn from ceilings in entry and long hallway.
2. Clean up mess from removing popcorn (why do they put that stuff up???)
3. Wash walls and trim.
4. Spackle, spackle, and then more spackle.
5. Drywall mud - the ceiling where the drywall paper came off, and any cracks and divots in the walls.
6. Sand the ceilings and walls where needed...and clean up the mess after.
7. Fix any spots you find that you didn't fix before.
8. Sand those spots when dry.
9. Put a coat of primer over walls and ceilings.
10. Paint the ceiling white.
11. Paint the walls 'Pale Butter'.
12. Paint the trim 'Ultra White'.
13. Remove old light fixtures and donate to the local thrift store.
14. Install new track lighting to form a gallery appearance.
15. Choose artwork/photographs for the new gallery.
16. Frame and hang artwork.
17. Go out for a beer.

We are currently between step 7 and 8 - so we're just about ready to start with the primer! Yea! Remodeling/redecorating is never easy. It's always more work than you thought it would be, more expensive than you projected it to be, and takes twice as long as any TV show will illustrate. The pay off is still the best part - knowing that you did it yourself, you did it right, and are happy with the results!

So, while there are no pictures for my entry today - there will be pictures coming very soon!

More Weekend Observing

While Melinda has chosen a home-improvement project that she will post about soon, with the new moon and what seems like a week's worth of rain and clouds, I went out observing last night (Saturday). I didn't really have a program - if I got really ambitious, I was thinking of taking a nap and staying for morning comet Lulin, but it was not to be...


For no particular reason, I went out to where the astronomy club has observed for decades - Empire Ranch. It is about a 50 mile drive SE of Tucson and has a reasonable sky except back to the NW towards Tucson. We set up on an old airstrip, mostly overgrown with weeds now. This weekend, the site was shared with some "dog trials" people - there were about 7 big RVs, a few horses and LOTS of hunting dogs that we could hear yipping a good part of the early evening. No big campfires or other lights, though, so good for that.


I parked next to 2 other cars that were setting up for visual observing, and as the sun set, quickly set up for some flats with the 14" Celestron, Hyperstar and the Canon 20Da. These "twilight sky flats" help correct for uneven illumination in the detector and make the results look better. I merely propped up the scope in the case, and once those reference frames were taken, took a more leisurely approach to setting up the gear. Once set up, I chose my first object - one of my favorite photographic fields north of the center belt star of Orion - Alnilam. The reflection nebula IC 426 and others make an interesting shot, though I've never seen them visually. I quickly framed the field, making sure to keep the bright stars out of the frame, found a guide star and started a series of 2 minute exposures. Nothing unusual as I took about 30 minutes worth of exposure, then moved to the next field. As I climbed to the camera to frame the field, I noticed the corrector was dewing rapidly! With even the small amounts of rain we've had recently, the clear skies dropped the temps below the dew point and I was already done imaging for the night. Dew is so seldom an issue in Arizona that almost no one I know has any anti-dew devices (a lot more common in the Midwest and elsewhere). The shot shows the C-14 with the Hyperstar setup on a different observing trip. The camera sits up in front and makes the telescope an equivalent 660mm lens at F/1.9! At that speed, only short exposures are needed - 2 minutes is my standard at ISO 800.

Before leaving, I visited my neighboring astronomers - Bob and Joe were cruising galaxies in Eridanus, and with their Dobsonians, hadn't been affected by dew. I asked them if they had seen Comet 144P/Kushida, and they hadn't. I looked up the position and we got to see it through Bob's 15" - a really nice view. I took off and was home by 11pm - nearly a record for me!

So I only got one shot, but it came out pretty nice - IC 426 is right in the middle - there is an arc of similar reflection nebulae with small DG71 on the far left, and IC 424 and IC 423 on the right, top to bottom. If you look closely, besides seeing some guiding errors, there are a couple faint galaxies down towards 7 o'clock from IC 426. They are likely very distant, perhaps hundreds of millions of light years distant. In all a nice night, though it would have been nice to get a couple more objects in... I've been waiting for clouds to clear to image Lulin again, and another system is due in a day or two - cross your fingers!

Harvey Milk

When Melinda and I started this blog last summer, I made up a set of personal rules that I try to follow. In an effort not to alienate anyone, a big one for me was not to blog about politics, even through the heart of the election season just past. My friends and relatives likely know I'm liberal, and generally they are all conservative. But we get along fine because I don't argue politics, or for that matter, religion, gun control, abortion rights, or gay rights. I don't preach my opinion because everyone is entitled to their own. I will clarify a misconception someone may have about something I know, and I try to be well-read on current events, but generally, I don't campaign for causes.

Today, with the Oscar buzz surrounding the new movie Milk, we caught a matinee. I've actually tried to see it twice, but for interesting reasons, this was the one that worked out... Anyway, I've been a bit of a Sean Penn fan - I've enjoyed many of his movies since he played Spicoli on "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" way back in '82. Here, he portrays Harvey Milk, America's first openly-gay man elected to public office.

The fact that the movie is about a gay character may keep some of you away but it shouldn't. Likely you know a homosexual. I've got gay friends and an acquaintance of mine died of AIDS in the early '80s. You cannot reject a portion of the population that may include 10% of us or more.

There have been many recent biographic movies that have been lauded with Academy Awards lately - the Ray Charles and Johnny Cash biopics come to mind immediately. But here in Milk is a life to be celebrated! Some of my memories of the '70s are fuzzy, particularly the narrative of current events of that age, and I don't recall ever seeing Harvey Milk on TV, though I do recall the gay rights battle with Anita Bryant and Milk's shooting along with San Fransisco Mayor Moscone in 1978. In this movie Penn portrays him as an ordinary man being at the right place at the right time to step up not only for gay rights, but for Blacks, Latinos, teachers and union workers. The performance is spectacular and as you can see from our movie reviews, it was the only movie that we both gave a "10" (Melinda didn't get to see "Bolt 3D", and I'm a stereo nut). We both agree that if Penn doesn't get the Best Actor Oscar, the AMPAS has lost all credibility! Please see it if you can - you may not be liberal or approve of the gay lifestyle, but if you enjoy movies and are interested in groundbreaking American stories, go see this movie!

LSST Mirror Move

Yesterday we moved the primary mirror for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST)from the casting lab to polishing in preparation of starting optical work. While the total distance moved was less than 200 feet, it was the successful completion of a major milestone in the project, and was a carefully choreographed process than took 10 people the better part of a day!



When last blogging about LSST a week ago, we were just starting plugging the backplate holes to seal out generating coolant and subsequent grinding and polishing slurry. With that process complete, it was time to head over and prepare for diamond generating of the backplate. The photo shows the blue-tinted silicon mold material that seals well enough to keep liquids out of the mirror substrate, but will come out cleanly when it is time to remove the plugs. We need to remove something like .25" of the backplate to get the thickness we need, so there is plenty of bevel on the backplate holes to leave some for grinding and polishing and also in the final surface.

The red handling ring, which is perhaps better illustrated in a previous post, has been holding the support structure (called the spider) whose 54 supports, in turn are fastened to the mirror substrate's faceplate with a silicone bathtub caulk. It held the mirror vertical for the mold washout, and will now hold the mirror for backplate fabrication. When the back of the mirror is complete, the telescope interface loadspreaders will be glued to the backplate and the 54 supports will be removed once the mirror is flipped over and it is installed in the polishing cell.


Today's task was to transfer the mirror and spider to the air cart (used to move mirrors and cells around the lab), and remove them from the handling ring. It seems incongruous to use 45 ton cranes, steel-toed shoes, hardhats and air wrenches around an optics shop, but when handling loads like this (mirror plus spider plus handling ring was just over 42 tons!) you get used to ALL the tools you need to get the job done. The task was mostly uneventful, but there were some hardware changes that required a quick run to the machine shop for some mods (this spider is new and had some slight differences from that used by our other 8.4 meter spider).



So after the mods were done, the spider was centered and set down on the air cart, then the handling ring was detached, lifted and moved away from the now naked-looking LSST substrate. The last image demonstrates that a single person can move 30 ton loads around the lab using the air cart. It's 4 pads can lift incredible loads using air pressure, and the little yellow tractor provides the power and steering for maneuvering around the lab. It is like using a little red wagon to move loads around the back yard!


The next tasks are to install the plumbing troughs, move onto the Large Optical Generator, center and level the substrate to the turntable, and do the thousand little things that need doing before putting diamond wheel to glass. Stay tuned!