VERSION|0.5.1|SUBJECT|Frankie and Benny&#039;s|CONTENT|[url=http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap130317.html][img=images/2013/03/pic130317.jpg popup=false float=right][/url]I&#039;m quite surprised that the media hasn&#039;t thought of theironduck&#039;s point that we now have popes Frankie and Benny. I briefly thought about producing an appropriate menu that the two popes might enjoy, Vatican Corruption burger with lashings of Catholic guilt sauce, that sort of thing, but couldn&#039;t be bothered.

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Decided to give my telescope a treat and clean its mirrors instead. They&#039;ve never been cleaned in the 20 odd years I&#039;ve had the telescope. I thought this might be adding to some of the problems I&#039;ve been having lately photographing the sun. Some of the out of focus sunsposts seemed to move with the telescope rather than with the sun. Boy, did the main mirror need a clean.

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Yes, believe it or not, there&#039;s a mirror underneath all that gunk.

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Still haven&#039;t been able to see the comet. Got a brief patch of clear sky this morning about 3am. Took a few snaps to see how eneloop AA lsd batteries faired in the cold - not bad actually. Here&#039;s a pic of the constellation of Hercules. Nearly all the dots in this picture are stars that are a few tens to a few hundreds of light years away. The one being pointed to (click for a larger version with an arrow) is about 25,000 light years away and is a [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_13]globular cluster[/url] of several hundred thousand stars.

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Looking forward to seeing what the sky looks like through a clean mirror!
|IP-ADDRESS|94.168.119.214|DATE|1363520136|CREATEDBY|admin