So I’ve put together a draft observing log, curious if people have any other suggestions. I feel like I’ve gone way overboard on the data and details, not enough room for the notes. And I’m not sure I’ll ever get into drawing, but it’s there for now.
Views welcome.
A new owner of an older 8SE asked me what I thought were the priority accessories to get to go with the stock package (mount, OTA, and 25 mm Plossl). I thought it would be an easy answer, and then realized it is almost as difficult to answer as what scope would be best for someone. But I did respond and thought I could maybe turn it into a post too. Obviously it all depends on what they want to look at the most and from where. Maybe even with whom. Nevertheless, here are my thoughts on some extra considerations.
A. A good power source. I have the Celestron Lithium-Ion tank, which seems to work well for me, but I wouldn’t necessarily want to use it for a 12-hour viewing excursion. I have two old Powertanks and I may try to revive them to just use as a backup.
B. Tools to help with levelling. A simple bubble level, or apps like Cliniometer for an Android phone. I need it to make sure the scope is level before trying to align.
C. A tool to help with GPS. If you know where you are going beforehand, Google Maps will give you the coordinates.… Read the rest
I’ve blogged about my challenges and successes (Finally learning with the Celestron NexStar 8SE and Solving alignment problems with the Celestron NexStar 8SE), so I thought I would do a quick summary of the proper way to align my scope in case it helps others.
Here are my “four” options, although the first two are obviously tongue-in-cheek:
Either get a different scope or take up knitting…I actually thought about both.
Or until two people help you figure out why it’s not working (see above two posts).
I’ll give the full write-up below with all the bells and whistles, but this will just be the short process steps.
I had one of those handheld telescopes when I was a kid, and I tried to look at the stars, but well, that went about as well as you think it might have gone. I couldn’t see diddly except for the moon. And even then, I never saw ridges. Then five years ago, I bought a real telescope (Celestron NexStar 8SE below) and attempted to embrace my new hobby without a lot of success.
Now, I’m going to deal with a giant issue right upfront to get it out of the way. I tried a variety of scopes both before and after I bought my scope, and it was very clear when I was done that I had bought the right scope and mount for me. Easy setup, good value for money, a few steps above entry-level, and a computerized scope to help me get going. I mention this because as I describe some of the problems to come, there is a rabid group of starhoppers out there who think the goto motorized scopes are either a waste of money or the devil’s spawn for learning or just more trouble than they’re worth. It’s a lot like someone who likes baking telling someone who has trouble working a bread machine that they should just skip it altogether and make bread by hand.… Read the rest
So I’ve been fighting through my astronomy challenges with my scope (Celestron 8SE), mostly with the support of a guy in one of the forums on a site called Cloudy Nights (i.e. when you have clear nights, you go outside; when you have cloudy nights, you can go online!). He’s super knowledgeable, and while he’s not active in the forum anymore, he’s been giving me fantastic suggestions on things to improve my approach.
Tonight, I went to what I consider level 3. Level 1 would be standard stuff. Level 2 would be the tweaking and adjustments I’ve done up until now.
Level 3 i.e. tonight was to check to see if the rate at which the mount slews left / right and up / down is set correctly. Or more accurately, if there is enough tension to stop it from playing too much when aligned. How did it go?
It was a total shit show.
I got it to align, I followed the instructions, everything seemed to go okay. I tried adjusting the settings but didn’t seem to make much difference (it’s a scale from 0 to 99, you start small and make increments). I still felt I was having too much play.… Read the rest
I haven’t started my official evaluation test yet for my using my scope (Attempt #0 of 5 to save my hobby), mostly as I am still struggling to figure out what exactly is causing the alignment problems. After lots of back and forth with a few people online and by email, the list of potential problems is known but not insignificant.
First and foremost, apparently the three-star method I’ve been using is notoriously prone to margins of errors. Nice. I don’t know how I missed that previously, but considering that’s the approach I’ve been using since the beginning, not encouraging. Apparently, I’m just a fucking idiot.
Second, I need to make sure everything is fine for the actual mechanics of it. This includes five things:
Third, for the preferred two-star alignment, I confess it sounded less accurate to me originally so I never really considered it.… Read the rest
My frustration levels are off the chart with my astronomy hobby. I just can’t seem to raise my capacity high enough to have a consistently positive outing. This is what I was afraid of when I bought the scope and was the main reason I went with the scope I did — a Celestron NexStar 8SE. Designed as an “easy” entry scope, it comes with a bunch of computerized innards that basically allow you to point it at three bright stars, tell the computer in it where they are, the computer figures out which ones are which, and bob’s your uncle, the scope is fully aligned. On a stock alt-azimuth scope, there’s not much finesse for the user to worry about in the setup. Or so I thought.
However, early on, I was using it and I could find a few things once aligned, but not much that wasn’t already visible to the naked eye. I eventually figured out the problem was not a series of various options it could have been, it was narrowed to one. My alignment sucks (Finally learning with the Celestron NexStar 8SE).
So I came up with a workflow to increase the success factors and eliminate the idiot factors:
Last weekend, I was beset with lousy viewing due to low lying haze. Despite a fantastic forecast, I had haze going up to around 20-30 degrees above the horizon, so much so that Jupiter was nothing more than a round orange-y blob in the scope. We saw Arcturus and Antares, and a low-quality sight of Saturn, but I couldn’t get the scope to align. No biggie, I was also having power problems, and I thought that was the cause.
Last night though I headed off to the AstroPontiac viewing site. My friend Stephan is spearheading the initiative to bring a dark sky viewing site to the area, and he has been working on it for just over 7 years. I’m on the board and manage the website, but the yeoman duties fall to him for most of it. The site is next to Gatineau Park’s Luskville Waterfall Trail (sentier de les chutes de Luskville), and it is relatively stunning. With the hill behind you to the N and NE, you have a relatively open vista to the SE, S and W. The field was recently cut down to size for the flora, and a bunch of us set up.
Or more accurately, they set up.… Read the rest
I posted awhile ago about restarting my hobby (#50by50 #05 – Re-start my astronomy hobby), and some other posts over the last couple of years about trying to figure out proper alignments and use of my Celestron 8SE scope. This past weekend, we were heading to my wife’s family’s cottage near Fenelon Falls and Bobcaygeon, and I was debating whether or not to take the scope. Their property has a lot of trees so Eastern views are out, but if I put my scope next to the lake, I have a pretty good SW view.
I hemmed, I hawed. Then I pulled up the Clear Sky Chart for Fenelon Falls (who knew there was even one for the area?), and the decision was made — every indicator for Saturday night was off the charts. I’m usually doing viewing in the Ottawa area and lucky to get medium predictions for quality (3/5), while the one for Saturday in Fenelon had 4s and even 5s! I wasn’t organized to take all my stuff with me, but how could I not? It delayed our departure by half an hour as I crammed every thing in after finding it all, and we went.
About 5:00 p.m.… Read the rest
I’m attempting a full-scale job search from scratch right now, something most of us in government don’t often do when we look for a job. Instead, most of us look for something that is just a bit different from what we have — a new area, or a new boss, or a new level, etc., but rarely do we step back and say, “Before I even look for a job, what do I want to find? What’s really important to me?”. By nature, employed people tend to be incrementalists.
So I wanted to look back at all my previous jobs — all the way back to being a paperboy — to see what I had learned in the jobs, and what I had liked about the positions. As I wrote, I found myself talking about experiences, not the “lessons learned” or even “what I learned about myself”, and I felt like I needed to get all that info out of my head and onto the page to allow myself the time to now look back at them and see what the outcomes and common elements were…in short, I wrote it all out so I could analyze it as if it was someone else.… Read the rest
This last post is a bit challenging to write as it is about my current job. And I don’t really have any distance or perspective from it yet, because I’m still doing it. But I’ll give it a go.
v. Manager, Planning and Accountability — One thing that frequently bugged me over the first six years was that we were fairly siloed in our division. There was a planning team, a reporting team, and my performance measurement team, but I really wanted them to mesh better together. We did what we could, but we were three separate teams with three separate managers. Sure, we reported to the same director, but we didn’t seem to be making much headway.
We merged with another division — horizontal policy — and another manager eventually left. We had no one to take those files, and I mentioned to the director in passing that if the planning manager wanted to shift things around, I was completely willing. I wanted to switch off the performance management file and on to the planning file, and I was either willing to shift completely or take it with me. I had zero interest though in the horizontal files. Been there, done that.… Read the rest
I was in need of rescuing at the end of the previous post…after 18 months of pushing string, and feeling like I not only had nothing to show for it but that the time had been a complete waste, I was spent. Literally. Figuratively. Mentally. Even physically. I had nothing left to give them. And to be honest, any self-confidence that I had previously was completely gone.
u. Manager, Performance Measurement, ESDC — I started working in the Skills and Employment Branch in May, and it was almost instantly a refreshing change. I wasn’t pushing string with abstract policy theory to combine social capital or human development, I was looking at concrete things like the Program Activity Architecture, performance metrics, indicators and logic models.
Things that were relatively straight-forward to me, particularly in comparison with the big ugly Integrated Policy Framework.
In addition, a lot of the work with the Branch was already done. They had consulted widely, a working group had given lots of info, and it was all in pretty good shape. Except for one thing. I didn’t think it was very strategic.
This was home to me, after having done the Sustainable Development Strategy + Gs&Cs + the Millennium Development Goals at CIDA, along with the traditional RPP, DPR and PAA stuff.… Read the rest
When I worked at DFAIT, and worked for a shouter, I thought I had pretty strong tolerance for bad behaviour. In fact, up until SDC, I was known for having worked for or with some people that others wouldn’t even consider. And honestly, I never had a problem with any of them. Until I worked for the DG that got fired in the last post. I needed a bit of a cleanse after that, and so I went to work with a Director that I had worked with previously.
t. Manager, Strategy and Integration, HRSDC — When I look back at this job, it is extremely difficult to separate the final result (bad) from the experience of working there (good). There are times afterwards that I felt like I wasted 18 months of my life. I didn’t, not really, but it sure felt like it at the end.
I was the manager in this group, and our team had three major deliverables — medium-term planning, an integrated policy framework, and the policy work to support creating HRSDC as a Centre of Excellence. MTP was with another manager, I was responsible for the other two. In actual fact, our team had more deliverables than just three, but these three were significant — they were three of the four commitments in the ADM’s performance agreement.… Read the rest
As I finished my previous post, I was finishing up what I had thought was going to be my best job ever — a senior policy advisor position in the Deputy Minister’s Office at CIDA. Instead, I was pushing too much paper. I also had another problem with my career — I was under-classified. While I was routinely offered, accepting and performing at ES-05, ES-06, PM-06 and even sometimes EX-01 levels, I was still an ES-04. I was in a competition back in Policy Branch to “regularize” my level with an ES-05 job, but I had my eye on a higher prize…the newly-created Social Development Canada ran a competition for their Manager of International Affairs position.
s. Manager, International Relations, SDC — HRDC had been through a big scandal at the end of the 1990s, most of which turned out to be more smoke than substance. But a new government direction was set in 2004/05, and the huge department split into two — Human Resources and Skills Development Canada and Social Development Canada. SDC was headed by Minister Ken Dryden. Yes, that Ken Dryden. The Ken Dryden of hockey fame, who had stopped playing hockey early on and finished a law degree and then went back to hockey for a while.… Read the rest
Back when I was a PM-03 in Multilateral Branch, and just about to rotate to the Caribbean division, a job came available in the Cabinet Affairs office at CIDA. Different departments put these divisions in various parts of their structure…some put it in the Deputy Minister’s Office / Corporate Secretariat, and so they have a nice high-level “pull” function from the rest of the department. Some embed it in the policy branch as a policy coordination type-job. Others embed it in policy, but almost as a corporate job.
DFAIT had it in one of their policy branches, albeit in a corporate policy type role, and people fought for those jobs. Considering lots of DFAITers wanted to be Hill staffers, it’s not surprising to see those with and without political ambitions wanting to be “in the know” for what was going forward to Cabinet, even if DFAIT wasn’t often actively involved in the MCs. At CIDA? The group had to advertise, multiple times, to find people willing to do the job. Even going outside the Department. Unheard of, in certain departments.
I was interested when I was a PM-03, but they wanted Cs for french, and I only had Bs. I was encouraged to apply by the HR people, even with my profile, I went and had my discussion with them, in French, and they said, “All right, come work here.”… Read the rest
My new job as an “economist/social scientist” analyst i.e. an ES was as great as I expected it to be. I liked the looks of the files, I knew some of the people, I was excited.
q. Analyst, Policy Branch, CIDA — The division had four main files, and I got to play on each of them over the years. I started in February 2002, and stayed until December 2004. Almost three complete years, but the ride was incredible.
Early on, I was assigned the OECD files, and we were gearing up to do the OECD Peer Review of Canada’s Aid Program. I was excited, it looked good, and more importantly, we had to write a huge memo covering the whole aid program. Horizontal work across the department, interdepartmental work, consultations, we were going big on this one. We recommended, and our recommendation was accepted, that the Minister be involved and attend the OECD management meeting in October. Most of a full year, flat out. The Director had hired a former VP to lead the project work, and informally as the OECD lead, I would lead him. Yeah right.
It was very clear at the start that he was a strong personality, and there were some people who had known him well who basically said, “Him?… Read the rest
In the previous post (What I learned from my previous jobs – Part 9), I had accepted a rotation to the Caribbean division to manage trade projects, with a small option to be developed as an analyst. Of all the positions available, I got my first choice, but honestly, I was moving because it was good for my career, not because I wanted to leave multilateral.
p. Development Officer, Caribbean, CIDA — The job was new and different, and I liked my coworkers and my boss. It was a pretty big change, not the least of which is I now needed to know how to do project administration in SAP. Project structures, WBS elements, complicated menus, approving disbursements, it was all there.
I’m pretty good with computers, and even I found it somewhat confusing at times. We had a small fund set up to do trade micro-projects, plus a couple of larger trade projects with the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States and the CARICOM Secretariat in Guyana. Pretty straightforward, not particularly large projects.
I dove into the files. I had a pretty good handle on the two big projects within a week — mostly high-level projects to support them doing some horizontal work across the region to develop almost a regional perspective on certain WTO-related files.… Read the rest
At the end of the last post (What I learned from my previous jobs – Part 8), I had handed in my pass at DFAIT and was moving to CIDA. September 1997. I was now a full indeterminate employee. Life was good.
o. Development Officer, Multilateral, CIDA — It wasn’t great for pay, however. I had been an IS-03 (information officer level 3) at DFAIT on a term, but I was now a PM-01 (programme administration/project management, level 1) at CIDA. The difference in pay was about $15K. Not an easy pill to swallow, but I got a spoonful of sugar in the form of partial salary protection (they moved me to the top of the PM-01 band so I only dropped $9-10K or so).
I was assigned to the UN division. As I mentioned previously, I had requested it, and they had never had anyone ever request multilateral before. I don’t think they knew exactly what to do with me when I arrived, because normally they had brought in new officers fresh off the street, not from other departments. I arrived, desk officer ready, and they knew I was capable of some things more than a new recruit but not quite what yet.… Read the rest
This will not be a particularly easy post to write, not because of what happened at work during the time, but rather what happened in my personal life. I was about to experience grief, really for the first time in my life. I say this upfront as I talk about my dad, and while you might be here to read about work, and lessons learned, if you are dealing with other forms of grief right now, you may want to skip this one. Consider it fair warning, although it won’t be particularly maudlin.
m. Contractor, DFAIT — I was back at DFAIT and gearing up for the APEC summit that was taking place in Indonesia. There were a couple of other contractors working too, APEC was getting bigger and bigger and we needed more help sometimes, but they weren’t very good in my view. Great at talking about how great they were, but when the crunch came, they were too busy schmoozing to work. I began to see that like employees, not all contractors were created equal. There were some that were flashy, some that could write, and some that were workhorses. Flash got hired and paid well, workhorses got renewals.… Read the rest
At the end of my previous post, I had wrapped up all my contracts with DFAIT. And I was wondering what to do with my life. It was April, and I took a trip to the Bahamas. I enjoyed myself, but there was a small nagging worry. What was I going to do for work when I got back?
The answer turned out to be almost nothing. I couldn’t work at DFAIT, and I didn’t have many contacts that were hiring at other departments the way DFAIT did. I wasn’t one of the high-priced contractors that people hired at $500-$1000 a day but only 10-20 days at a time. I was basically an employee who couldn’t be hired as an employee given the freeze, and I didn’t have any contracts.
The obvious answer would have been, at least to some people, to return to school. I could have shown up in May, done a semester, and continued on with my schooling. Every four months since I started at DFAIT, I had sent an update to the school saying “Okay, stopping out another four months”. All I had to do was go back, and I could resume.
Except for one thing. I didn’t want to.… Read the rest
