Red Presents - This or That from the Druidry in These Parts

Crumby spells, Telescope Tomfoolery, is it worth the trouble? Not lately it isn't. Once the trees go deciduous there are just too many electric lights impinging upon the CB. The generalized electric light is made much worse by all the Baby Jesus electric lights tossed into the mix. The night sky glows with distracting electric light.

If you live in a city, or have lots of electric lights nearby that stay on all night, then your telescopery opportunities are way curtailed. This is even more of a curtailment to telescopery opportunities than modest means determining what gear you can afford.

On the other hand, if you like to stay up all night anyway, and have a safe pasture or yard, there are some things worth looking at. For lot's of these things you don't need a telescope. For example, you may teach yourself the constellations plus their schedules and learn the names of the brighter stars and what the various naked eye planets are up to. With binoculars you can see interesting groups of stars like the Pleiades and the Hyades. That's lotsa fun, but does not kill much time. With a telescope you can see details of the moon, details of the bigger and closer planets, several planetary nebula, lots of nice double and multiple stars, the Great Orion Nebula, the very biggest and brightest galaxies, Andromeda and Sombrero and a good many open and globular clusters, some of which are actually worth looking at twice. To see any of the other nebulae and deep sky objects in general, you need to move somewhere with less useless electric light. Way less. Or, you can tote your telescope on out to dark skies somewhere.

For some reason, I am not a telescope toter. My little telescopes are astronomically deficient compared to my big ones, and the big ones are, well, too aggravating to tote around, even with Lleu Llaw and his Steady Hand, helping. So gradually, I can see my astronomical telescopery enthusiasm waning. Unless, of course, we move the CB to darker parts.

Oh well. The only way Druids ever learn about a subtopic is to immerse in the fount of it. Which brings me around to my bosom companion, Ray, and his Druid calendar. I shall help Ray with his calendar even if I don't get a moon ride. We really do need a decent calendar for these parts.
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Ray spells, a precipitation update. The gauge held 1.1 inches this morning. Starting from the first day of Druid Year (DY) 1, Day 1 of DY 1 is also known as the Winter Solstice, the CB gauge has logged 2.8 inches.

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Rayetta spells, Rayetta's butterflies. Today, on the 14th day of DY 1, in the Season of Polaris, also known as the Polar Bear, and also a day of the Partition, Praise Ye, WG!!!!, the flutterbyes are dainty sulphurs, sleepy oranges, southern dogfaces, red admirals, ubiquitous snouts, and gulf fritillaries. A large white butterfly also fluttered bye, before I could sneak up on it.

Crumby and I are taking photography lessons. Aren't we Crumby?

Yepper. Mostly against my will.

Nonsense Crumby! You better take your lessons like a good boy if you know what's good for you.

Yepper.

Explain to me what we learned at our lesson today, Crumby.

All righty then. We learned that our instructor of photography, Raymone, is only visible from 2PM to 2:30PM and that if we are late to our lesson, Raymone won't be visible.

No, no, no, Crumby. What did we learn about photography?

Higher aperture settings increase the depth of focus, Rayetta. On our camera, if you turn the big knob to the A position, you can manually set the aperture from 2.8 to 8.0 something or other.

Very good Crumby. Isn't it nice to know that?

Yepper.

Hmmm. So to show how much Crumby and I learned at our lesson today, I am fixing to publish a southern dogface picture and a red admiral picture. And Crumby is fixing to publish another picture of his fungus.

Zerene cesonia

Vanessa atalanta

Exidia glandulosa