The uncle is in an ICU unit with a new heart. The operation was a mere five hours long, then wheeled to a room where they began exercising his lower body to get the new heart pumping. Twelve hours after the end of the operation, he was sitting up in the bed so they could check the sutures and look for leaks etc. For those of you who don't understand how amazing and full of wonders the world you live in can be, read that again. I wrote a long post about the parents' visit, saved a draft, came back and finished it only to lose it in my first computer crash in 3-4 years. I'll redo and post, eventually. Finally, life sucks for most of us. Sometimes in big ways, mostly in the little ways that we make into big piles of stupid. It gets better.
Adding under the comment. He is up and walking around, not 24 hours after a heart transplant. Up. And... walking. Research docs don't get enough love; they toil in the shadows and nobody knows they exist until something like this happens. Hopefully by the time I need this done they can grow a new heart out of my own stem cells.
May can eat a bag of dildos for all it's done to me and mine this year. And we have had nothing but shit weather so I cannot even go do out reach and have fun talking to people out in the great chat-room under the sky. All I got to do is hold it together for a week and this damn month is over.
Cloudy for my solar program earlier this month, cloudy for the Mercury Transit. Cloudy and rain for the nights around first quarter moon, when we go out most often. And cloudy and drizzle for the prime Mars viewing this week and early next. At one time the biggest and most expensive telescope in the world was located in Ireland. IRELAND I'm amazed they had any clear skies at all to look at stuff!How shit is "shit weather"?
The Irish rain never bothers me
Oh, yeah I suppose that's a hobbie that relies quite heavily on the weather. What sort of telescope(s) do you have? Also, I had NO idea about that awesome telescope, thanks for showing me. We have some clear days in the summer, but there are better places to build the world's biggest telescope.
I have a 14" Dobsonian, an 80mm refactor, a 5" Cass, a solar scope, a few pairs of binoculars including a 20x80 pair I use to intimidate the public these bad boys, and the club has a pair of 16" scopes that I am trying to get to use for some photography skill building. Fun story time. William Herschel was a composer who fell into astronomy and discovered Uranus, became the Royal Astronomer, and really created observational Astronomy. From Ireland and Wales. His son John was an amazing man in his own right. One of the things that John Herschel came up with is putting telescopes on mountains to get over as much air as possible. Before him, telescopes were built where the scientists lived, usually in cities with access to infrastructure. One of the reasons they build the big scopes in places like Chile is the desert there gets .01" of rain a decade and sits at 14,000 feet which is above roughly 80% of the water vapour in the air. You can do some of the neat infrared stuff there. The top of the volcanoes in Hawaii have a benefit that not only are they at 12,000+ feet but the ocean all around them makes for very still air. Then you can use lasers to wiggle the mirrors and cancel out the interference from the atmosphere. And to think, the idea of putting the big telescopes on mountains is just about 150 years old.What sort of telescope(s) do you have?
but there are better places to build the world's biggest telescope.