Eclipse

There was a lunar eclipse last night and I took some not great pictures. This is a direct consequence of my not having a zoom or telephoto lens. My longest is the Canon 50mm f/1.4 which is on an APS-C crop so it’s more like an 80mm in big-boy cameras.

The telescope does a decent job of looking at things like the moon and the larger planets but mars was just an indistinct bright spot even though it is very close right now. I could have gone to the 8mm objective but a) that’s not a very good lens and b) the amount of shaking makes it hard to see anything anyway. Maybe some day I’ll get a better scope but I just don’t use the one I have enough to really justify it.

Bill and I made beer again. This one is a clone of Fuller’s London Pride which we are tentatively calling Austin Smug. The final gravity ended up almost 10 points low (1.006 vs 1.015 target) and was only 12 points with the priming sugar in. We did see something interesting during the initial brew. We got a real, good cold break which was probably facilitated by adding a coagulant Austin Homebrew recommended. I have a video of the bits and pieces settling out. Sorry for the iphone quality video.

Finally, I got a second iSi cream whipper so I can make waffles and put whipped cream on them at the same time. But as a side benefit I also have some CO2 chargers now also so I made some carbonated grapes. I have a video of those too.