Seeing was bad, not much chance of imaging galaxies or nebulae, so I went for the Moon instead:
Note to self: ZWO ASI174MC, undebayered raw in FC, debayer RGGB in FCdeb, K3x2, Reg5, PS.
Archive for 2019
Ups and downs
T+114 today and I was back at LRI for a haematology consultation and a fourth and final dose of IV Rituximab. During Wednesday's cardiology consultation at Glenfield Hospital I was told that my lack of get-up-and-go was due to me being anaemic, but today the LRI doc told me that I'm not. Today's Hb level was 109 g/L, and normal is 130-180 g/L, so go figure.
Platelets and WCC are both the highest they've been since 2015, and neutrophils are holding steady in the middle of the normal range, so that's all good. Serum ferritin, however, is at an all-time high, so high that I've had to extend the y-axis on the charts. The most recent test has the level at a whopping 4201 × 10-6 g/L (normal is 15–350 × 10-6 g/L, preferred is 50–200 × 10-6 g/L) but they say that I can't start venesections to reduce the level until next year which means living with the effects for a while yet.
The Glandular Fever has resolved, so they've decided that I won't need those incredibly-expensive Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) Specific Cytotoxic T-Cells after all.
You'll have to excuse me now - I need to get back to the feeding regime... I need to take in at least 2000 calories a day just to maintain my reduced body-weight, and they'd like me to up that to at least 2200 a day to help me to regain 15kg of the 30kg that I've lost since the start of the year. I seem to spend most of my waking hours scoffing or crapping. I'm not short of suitable food and drink but having an appetite and functional taste-buds would help.
Observing Report 18th August 2019 (a better ISS Solar Transit)
I thought that my recent unscheduled stay in hospital would mean missing this morning's ISS Solar Transit, but I was let out yesterday after only 10 days.
There were hardly any gaps in the cloud cover, but I got set up anyway. Luckily, a small gap appeared at just the right time and for just long enough to get the job done. The recently-acquired ZWO ASI174MC made light work of capturing full-frame (1936 x 1216 px) raw .avi data at 160 FPS.
Here's a clip, slowed to 4 FPS. It's best viewed in full-screen at 1080p.
And here's a cropped stack of the ISS. I think that it's a reasonable first effort:
Beyond 100 Days
Started to get bad nausea and for a few days I was unable to swallow and/or keep down all of my pills, so we called it in on T+99 and they admitted me to Ward 41. After a bit of TLC they moved me to BMTU on T+102 so that they could give me another bag of Rituximab (my EBV markers count had gone up to new heights ~ 40 million). Because the Rituximab's not working as soon or as well as expected, they are considering plying me with a different drug - Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) Specific Cytotoxic T-Cells (made in Australasia, stored in Scotland) - to give my new T-Cells a kick up the ass.
It's been a boring few days - I'm not confined to the building but I had a fair few things planned for the weekend and for this week, and it's all gone to shit.
Man or mouse?
Most people get the EBV when they are young and have few, if any, effects. It doesn't go away, it just sits there doing nothing bad. I've no doubt that I am one of those people.
The problem is that having a stem-cell transplant can leave you open to reactivation of the virus at a time when resistance is low.
So it's no surprise that, after a couple of weeks of having mildly-raised EBV markers (less than 1000, then 2239), on Monday (T+96 days) the marker count was through the roof at >45000 and I was diagnosed with Glandular Fever. With my returning facial hair and swollen neck-glands I look like a rather strange hamster.
Rituximab is the weapon of choice so I had my first of at least three weekly infusions of the stuff yesterday. It's not the most pleasant of cures.
Nearly made it to the T+100 days milestone without a major infection. I would "chin up" if it didn't hurt so much to do so. Ah well. As Matthias said, "Could be worse".
Observing Report 20th-21st July 2019 (Fifty years on)
At 02:56:15 UTC on July 21st 1969 Armstrong became the first person to step onto the Moon.
It seemed fitting to get an image of the Moon at 02:56:15 UTC on July 21st 2019.
It's not the best lunar image I've ever made, but I was trying out a recently-acquired second-hand camera with a recently-acquired second-hand PC and a recently-acquired new SSD. Being able to record full-frame (1936 x 1216 px) raw .avi files at 160 FPS with no skipped frames and no write-lag is a real improvement which should be useful for capturing ISS Transits:
