Almost full

But not quite...tomorrow it's truly full, it just likes to trick us the night before!

So, as I mentioned on Sunday in order to capture the full moon through the telescope for imaging purposes, I have to take two images and stitch them. This is not quite as straightforward as you would think.
For a start off, one side of the moon required slightly less exposure time than the other due to the brightness of it.
Then the minor adjustment of the telescope to move from one side to the other causes the focus to just knock itself out, just a smidge...refocussing is a bloomin' nightmare - camera shake AND telescope shake means it takes about a minute or so to get anything like sharp focus....it's a process that goes like this
Fine adjust
Wait for wobble to stop to assess sharpness
Fine adjust again
repeat until correct!

Oh, and because there is no transition line on the moon when it is almost, but not quite, full, it makes true sharpness a little elusive.

I have done my best, which in the circumstances is good enough I think.

So, I present to you the not quite full moon of April 2012.

In other news:
I am going to figure out how to go for a private MRI (abdominal) scan after being given a number of strong and compelling reasons for doing so.

I think I also have a little bit of a clue why things might have been SO bad over the last few days - I will need to assess my thoughts in the coming days to see whether I might have a working hypothesis.

Additionally, i have discovered that antihistamine tablets and strong painkillers are a knockout combination. Quite literally.

A community of caravan dwelling travellers are causing chaos in our community. They have been pitched up on an access road for nearly a month (very close to the local police station!) and then moved yesterday to a field close to us. In order to settle themselves they have removed a bolted gate from an iron fence around the site of an old school that is no longer used. The police presence there last night was staggering, but apparently not sufficient to remove them from the site. Today, the council have been clearing up the mess that was left at the previous site and the travellers have been establishing themselves good and proper on their new site. Bags of rubbish are already littering the boundary fence (the one that they have removed a section of!). The police are "aware of the situation" - I wait to see what will happen. I, like many of the locals, are unhappy, particularly when there is an official site for the Traveller community about 4 miles up the road.

I am being careful, for to express an opinion might land me foul of laws on racism or worse still, make me appear to be a reader of the Daily Mail!!!