Grumpy old man

I seem to be having another one of those annoying times in regard to astronomy. The weather has been pretty awful for the last few weeks (during the night anyway) but the last two nights have been nice and clear. The only problem with this is that I'm just starting to throw off some sort of illness (one of those nondescript "bug" things that come around from time to time) and I've also got a stinking cold that developed towards the end of the first illness.

Also, to top it off, the swollen eyelid I developed back in March came back in the last few days. I went to see the doctor today and it seems like it's a Cyst on my eyelid (although nowhere near as bad as the one illustrating that article) and that it'll probably be a permanent thing. It seems the options are that I just put up with it swelling up from time to time (and treat it with a hot compress in the hope that it might make it go away) or I have some minor surgery to remove it. To just make it more fun it's in my main observing eye.

Okay, that's all the really Grumpy Old Man stuff out of the way. I feel much better for that. ;)

On a more positive note last month was my best month so far for solar observing (spotting breaks in the cloud during the day is so much easier isn't it?) and I've been really enjoying it. At some point I think I'll need to get into it a bit more, improve my methods of counting and cataloguing active areas and spots and try and write more descriptive reports.

I'm also quite taken by the idea of this solar observing binocular that Scopes'n'Skies have added to their site. On the surface they seem quite good for the price.

File Under: Moaning, Grumpy, Solar Observing.