Cosgrove’s Cosmos Metablog Update #12!
December 18, 2023
Hi Folks,
I decided to wrap up the year with a final Metablog post.
Table of Contents Show (Click on lines to navigate)
A Very Strange Year…
Why has this been a strange year? For one thing, it has been my least productive year when it comes to astrophotography. What caused this?
First, it was due to a health scare and the need for surgery and recovery time
Secondly, it was due to very bad weather with a lot of clouds occurring during new Moon cycles
Thirdly, Smoke plumes from Canadian and Western US wildfires dominated our skies during the summer
Finally, Jan and I have bought a property that will support the building of my observatory! But the time needed to handle the closing, preparation for the upcoming move - and getting our current house ready for resale - have just completely absorbed my bandwidth.
This resulted in a much smaller number of imaging projects completed along with a smaller number of posts and videos being done.
I hope to see this change once our move is complete!
New Images Since the Last MetaBlog
During the last part of the year, I had one block of time with clear skies, and I took advantage of it. This resulted in three new imaging projects with reasonably long integration times. I had the trees trimmed back on both sides of the driveway, giving me more time for exposure each night.
Reprocessing Projects
I also had the time to reprocess two more images I had originally captured in previous years. I was pretty happy with the new results I could achieve with the news tools and techniques that are now part of my processing regimen.
New Articles
Since the last Metablog, I have also published several new articles.
The Quest for an Observatory
2-Minute Tutorials
Presentations
Since the last Metablog update, I have been invited to give three presentations.
Two of those were given, and one had to be rescheduled for later this Spring.
The first presentation took place on September 27th and was given to the local chapter of the Image Science and Technology Association. This can be seen here:
https://cosgrovescosmos.com/talks-presentations/ist-talk-sept-2023
The second was given to the Optical Instrumentation and Testing Course, taught by Rob Parada at Monroe Community College. This can be seen here:
https://cosgrovescosmos.com/talks-presentations/mcc-talk-dec-2023
The third was a Zoom presentation to be given to the Hertford Astronomy Group Astrophotography Subgroup (HAGAS) in the UK. This had to be rescheduled due to a technical problem in the venue used.
Social Media Milestones
During the last few months, I have barely posted ANYTHING to my social media accounts. Despite this, there has been some activity of note.
Facebook:
On December 7th, Cosgrove’s Cosmos reached the 6K Followers milestone! Given how little I had posted during the last two months, I was amazed at this. As of this writing, I now have 6,432 followers and am on track to hit 7K soon!
YouTube:
We recently hit the 50K Views milestone with a modest group of 1367 followers, and we are just short of 3K hours of viewing!
X (formally Twitter):
Honestly, I have been pretty disappointed with the X platform and Elon Musk's changes here. I have seriously contemplated deleting my account. I have just below 2,500 followers and have done little to grow this number.
LinkedIn:
I don’t usually mention LinkedIn when I talk about social media, but I have a professional LinkedIn profile and share images and articles I post there. Why? It’s not typically a place you would think of as a hotbed of astrophotographic interest. I post there so my professional friends and colleagues can see what I am doing. To my surprise, I have been gaining followers without really trying. Currently, I have 800 followers, and this number is growing. So, who knew?
Health Update
Many of you have asked how I am doing health-wise, so I thought I would include an update here.
I have mostly recovered from my partial Nephrectomy. For the most part, I have regained my lost stamina and am feeling pretty much like my old self!
Recently, I had my 6-month follow-up assessment. This included new blood work to measure my kidney function and a new MRI scan.
The last time I had an MRI scan, I discovered that I was much more claustrophobic than I would have ever guessed. But being trapped for 40 minutes in a coffin-line tube was extremely uncomfortable for me. So, I was dreading the follow-up scan.
But this time around, they used a “Large Bore” machine, which was able to do the scan in 20 minutes rather than 40, and my doctor prescribed a “happy” pill to help me get through it. The “happy” pill was more like a “Sleepy” pill as they had to keep waking me back up - but this scan was a breeze this time!
The news on this end was all good.
My kidney performance is almost normal, and the scan came back clear! Given that the pathology was benign, I am told that there is no real need for further follow-ups.
I have been so fortunate here. I never could have imagined an outcome like when the large tumor was first found early this year.
Thank you all for your support and kind wishes!
Observatory Project Update
As I have shared in an earlier post, Jan and I finally found a property that would support the building of my own observatory after a 2-year search. Our offer was accepted, and we finally had a path forward!
As soon as it was accepted, Jan and I jumped into full gear to:
Secure financing and everything we needed to prepare for closing
Started decluttering our house - 30+ years of accumulated junk and be thinned down!
Getting quotes and preparing to do work on our current house to prepare it for putting on the market
Preparing for work on the new house before we move it.
Our plan now is to move at the end of January. February will be used to settle in and prep the old house, which will be listed in early March.
Once that is done, I will start working on the observatory project! I hope to break ground in Summer!
Last week, we closed on the property!
What’s Coming Up
In the short term, I will have to continue to focus on issues with the move, getting situated in the new house, and selling the old house.
My next priority is setting things up in the new place so I can shoot images before the observatory's construction. I don’t think I can shoot from my driveway as I did before, so I want to set things up to shoot from the backyard. I will be posting about this effort.
Finally, I am working on an observatory update. I have a series of issues that I need to work through to solidify the design for this particular property. I hope to get that posted soon and would love to get your feedback and suggestions around this.
Wrap-Up
That’s all for now! I would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
I hope all of us are blessed with good health and fortune - and better sky conditions for 2024!
Pat
