Why "Chickens in the Mist"?

I've been flirting on and off with Astronomy and astrophotography since the close approach of Mars in 2003. While living in Dallas my wife Kate and I bought our first "real" telescope, a Meade ETX-90. Like many others before me, I was sold on the lovely pictures of nebula and galaxy and just couldn't wait to explore the heavens with my own eyes. And, like many others before me, I was disappointed to find that all I could see of those lovely nebula and galaxies were faint grey blobs, when I could see them at all. I looked at the rings of Saturn and the cloud bands of Jupiter, and for a while thought that was about it.

Then, I had an epiphany.

I attached the body of my digital camera (a Kodak, 4 megapixel point and shoot) to a 26mm eyepiece (using duct tape and a metal, um, "bracket" I made out of some extra scrap I had lying around) and took a picture of Jupiter. Wow. I took a picture of Jupiter and it actually looked pretty good! Then I had my second epiphany, and I pointed my telescope, camera attached, at the Great Orion Nebula. WOW. COLOR! And, for a while, that was about it (the camera could only take an exposure of up to 1 second, and it was not an astronomical imager).

Fast forward to 2008, we had moved from Dallas to Bellingham to be closer to family. On a dark and clear night, I felt the tug again to explore the heavens. So, after some negotiation with Kate, I “invested” in a larger aperture telescope. I ordered a Meade 8 inch LX-90 GPS. As a limited time, special offer, it also came with a Meade DSI Pro camera. I figured well, okay, I’ll take it since it’s free, maybe it will be fun to play around with a little. It was early summer time, and Ursa Major was almost directly overhead. I pointed that scope at M51 and took my first image using the included software and I was hooked. I could see the galactic core, the spiral arms. It looked liked a real galaxy. It was, of course, slightly out of focus. And I didn’t know squat about stacking, stretching, or any other kind of post processing yet, but it blew away anything I could see with my naked eye.

About the same time we started raising our first flock of chickens. We had 5 Rhode Island Red hens, raised from chicks, who were about to start happily laying all the eggs we could eat, and then some. In building the chicken coop, I learned a lot about banging together a small building. That knowledge was directly applied to the construction of my roll off roof observatory a year later. We still have chickens (and we’re raising an additional flock of meat chickens) and it does occasionally get misty here. Shortly after the observatory building was weather tight, but before first light with the scope, I was pondering what to call it and I had one of those random memory moments when some obscure thing pops into my head. It was a misty morning, the chickens were scratching and kicking all the mulch out of the front flower beds into the driveway, and the Far Side comic strip by Gary Larson popped into my head. In particular, the panel shown below. And CitMO was thus christened…

Far Side Cartoon: Chickens in the Mist