The astro front's been pretty quiet for a while now. It's either been cloudy, or clear with lousy seeing. Warm days and cold nights might be nice weather, but the rapidly dropping temps play havoc with picture-taking. It's also been surprisingly windy--which just stirs up more cedar pollen. Arrrgh.
I did acquire a new piece of gear--a William Optics crayford focuser. It's a nice piece of kit, but the purchasing experience left something to be desired. I wanted a two-speed focuser for imaging, and all of the pictures of the focuser on this page are of a two-speed unit. There's no text describing it one way or the other. Add it to the shopping cart brings you to a page with a picture of a single-speed unit, until you click the "click to enlarge" link.
Well, it turns out you will indeed receive a single-speed focuser. WO has a good return policy, and they were willing to let me exchange the single-speeed for a dual speed. I countered by asking for a deal on the two-speed upgrade they sell, and they agreed, so I'll wind up with what I wanted for a fair price. But man, what a hassle!
In other news, I've been following a discussion on Cloudy Nights about an inexpensive observatory dome. The name went through several revisions, and guys were posting logo ideas. Most of the submissions were, um, amateur, so I tossed a couple of ideas out as well. After all of the revisions, here's what we finally wound up with:
I'm not crazy about the star, but I think the final logo turned out pretty well. I gave it away--an agency would have charged $1,500. I think I should get a dome out of the deal, but I'm happy just to have the work recognized.
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