Astrophotography... almost

Last night, bringing my kids home from a late movie, I saw Jupiter, bright and beautiful, fairly high in the sky. I felt the strong urge to get my telescope out and continue my Nikon astrophotography experiments.

Well, there are no pictures of Jupiter posted here yet, so you may be wondering what happened. What I learned last night were two Telescope Safety Tips... 1) When you have a heavy scope, always tighten up the leg braces of the tripod before tryng to move it, and 2) Always make sure your observing area is free of tripping hazards.

At about 1 a.m. I had my tripod positioned in-line with Jupiter but after the telescope (with camera attached) was mounted I realized it was 180 degrees off. So I picked it up and in the semi-dark tried to rotate it around. As I set it down one of the legs collapsed, followed shortly by the collapse of my own legs as I stumbled over some old lawn edging laying around on my back porch. It was like a slow-motion fall as I struggled to protect the telescope while my body twisted down to the ground. During that fall, my face and the telescope or tripod collided and a wave of numbness rolled across my left cheek. I knew some damage had been done, but was focused upon righting my telescope and determining whether either it or my camera had been damaged. When I realized I was bleeding, I abandoned that and went inside to check out the damage and get help. 'Twas a nasty, deep gash near my lips that seemed to go all the way through to my mouth. It wasn't bleeding much on the outside but was on the inside.

Well, to make a long story short, about seven or eight stitches and 3 hours later I was home and in bed, thinking of all of the ways the night could have gone differently. With this being the second accident within the last week (my wife suffered some soft-tissue damage in her foot at Seaside last weekend when her foot got caught behind the pedal of the surry we were riding as we were backing up), I'm beginning to see the truth to the concern that when you retire and start getting a lot more active your accident rate goes up. At this rate, will I last a year?!

I promise to all a nice photo of Jupiter posted here by June 30th. There's supposed to be nice clear skies this weekened, lows in the low-60's and I should be feeling a bit better.

P.S. - Yes, thanks to my self-sacrifice, it appears that my camera and telescope weathered the fall (at least the telescope's front glass-plate and mirror are uncracked). BTW... Jupiter is at opposition on July 9th (closest of the year). Hopefully I'll have some shots from eastern Oregon so that you can compare city and dark-sky views.