NGC 7331 and Stephan's Quintet

Last night, I did my first deep-sky astrophotography since early May. I had spent months awaiting cataract surgery and then going through it and recovering. For those who want to know, my vision is much sharper than before, but my right eye has a posterior capsular opacification right where the cataract was — in effect, a bit of the cataract is still there — which will be treated with a laser in the spring, after the new lens has had time to settle in. So, at present, my left eye is my observing eye, though both are better than either one was before.

Challenges to conservatives and to liberals

I posted the following two challenges on Facebook today. My most strongly partisan friends did not like whichever one was addressed to them. Many other people did.

A challenge to conservatives:

To those of you who want to poke fun at the No Kings Day protests and allege that George Soros paid for them or something:

You need to put more effort into understanding than ridiculing.

They happened. If you don't know why they happened (and I mean really know — not make up a silly story), then you're not well informed.

Two percent of the nation's population came out and protested. If you think they are seriously mistaken about something, then you need to listen to them until you fully understand their mistake, then point it out in a way that actually communicates with the people who are mistaken.

Despising and ridiculing half of your fellow citizens is not good citizenship and is certainly not good Christianity. I know it has become fashionable for "conservatives" (who abandoned real conservatism long ago) to speak in insults. No. That's as obnoxious now as it ever was.

A challenge to liberals:

Now I want to challenge liberals to make an effort to understand why people still support Trump.

Trump still has an approval rating above 40% even though he is heavily tainted by scandal, speaks in insults, posts obnoxious videos, and is in obviously failing health.

I cannot believe that 40% of Americans are fascist nutcases or are hopelessly stupid. Plenty of them, if asked, will say that they support Trump, in spite of his failings, because the alternative is worse.

So — Democrats — if you're as reasonable as you think you are, how did you lose that many people?

Ask them and see what you can find out. Shunning non-liberals and calling them all crazy is no solution. There must be things you could do to get some of them to understand and appreciate your position. You will also find out that many of them think you are needlessly entangled in unpopular causes that are far from the main business of public policy.

So work on understanding and being understood!

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A grand time

After a two-year hiatus we had a very successful and enjoyable trip to visit the grandchildren. Here are Dorothea and Stephen, the two youngest. Never a dull moment!

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Yet another book!

This one is based on a presentation I've given many times that was very popular with both academic and business groups. Click on the picture to see it on Amazon and read sample pages.

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Happy birthday (Oct. 5), Melody!

I forgot to blog about it at the time, but let the record show that on her birthday, Melody and I got to go to a very nice concert!

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Fixing Dad's binoculars

This slightly odd-looking pair of binoculars constitutes the completion of a 56-year-old project; it feels almost like paying off an old debt.

The only astronomical instrument I've had in use continuously since my first attempts at astronomy as a child was a 7×50 monocular, originally the right half of my father's binoculars. A couple of years after my father died, I was given the binoculars and found that the left eyepiece had been damaged. I didn't know of a way to repair it and ended up removing the left half of the binoculars and taking it apart, leaving a monocular and also learning a lot about optics. I continued to use the monocular for decades; I last did astronomy with it last night.

A couple of years later, I learned that the repair might not have been so hard after all, and I regretted scrapping the seemingly unrepairable left half. Ever since, I've felt that in some sense I owed my deceased father a pair of binoculars.

Not any more. On Cloudy Nights, in the Free to Good Home message thread, I recently came across two pairs of 7×50 binoculars almost identical to my father's, in salvage-for-parts condition. Tinkering with them, I managed to get a complete, working left half that matched my monocular. Now my father's binoculars are binoculars again!

They look battle-worn, and they have a screw for an axle because neither of the axles in the salvaged lot was quite right, but they work. I am looking forward to looking at the stars with them.

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