Old faithful 2!

With talk of clouds looming, I took the opportunity to get the telescope out again tonight. Had a great evening's viewing and actually managed to do a significant amount of star hopping, taking in Venus and Mars, some key stars from the constellations of Taurus, Orion, Auriga and Perseus as well as some clusters and nebulae. It definitely pays to take the time to get the telescope aligned properly. The joy of it actually going to where I directed it to tonight caused me to do more than a couple of little jigs of excitement around the garden.

All guilt free as well as we finished early today, so I came home and ploughed through some work in order to be able to have the evening outside taking in the universe.

The moon, once again resplendant in the sky, was my focus for imaging. I am trying to refine my technique with a large object that is relatively easy to focus on - however, through a camera eye piece directly into the telescope eyepiece, it's not as straightforward as you would think. Camera shake is amplified significantly when it's attached to a 750 mm scope on a 5ft tall tripod, even when everything is firmly planted in the ground and tightened up.

All in all, I'm happy with the way my moon shots are progressing. Now I need to figure out how to focus effectively on deep sky objects ...thats for another clear night.

It's a week since the pointless trip to the hospital, the excruciating pain and the crushing disappointment of a lack of care and understanding. Today the pain has been at a similar level but sadly, it seemed pointless to even call the Doctor. 6 weeks to my appointment...I'll get through to that, I'm trying to be positive and battle it, it's the only way I can feel normal. If I give in to it, then I feel even worse than I do with just the pain...I just need to find a painkiller that takes the edge off and doesn't make me feel like crap (or cause me to be too spaced out to drive!!!) I realised today that I haven't updated my pain diary since last Wednesday either - I think I have just become utterly sick of writing the same thing every day and having it largely disregarded by the medics I have encountered so far...I'll have to go back and update it though in order to reinforce the message to whichever consultant I see, just in case they are the slightest bit interested.