Astro Projects for a Shutdown

It's fairly evident that shelter-in-place is here to stay for quite a while. The state continues to feel that it will not be able to prevent a blowup from happening sometime around mid summer, at which time the hospitals may be seriously beyond their capacity. They are working to increase capacity so that when the crunch comes no one will have to go without any medical care they need. Will they succeed? We probably won't know until June or July.

That means it's likely to be solo astronomy until August. What's a person to do from a bright sky-site?

I have several projects I can work on:

1. Mirrors. I believe I have the supplies on hand for the polishing and figuring of several mirrors (one each of 6", 8", and 10")
2. Meteors. I can always set up my meteor detection system and start collecting data. More problematic is analyzing that data, but I may be able to program a sloppy workaround for having to visually inspect hundreds of images. 
3. Daytime Observing. Night observing is difficult here as the light pollution is awful, and in the last few years trees have grown to take away even more of my sky. Rather than fight that, it might make more sense to move to daytime observing. Targets include the Sun, planets, and brighter stars. An interesting question is daytime visibility in terms of star magnitude and angular separation from the Sun.

------------------

Back to one of the many reasons we're in this mess, the President of our country. Today's news brings word that Vice President Pence's press secretary, Katie Miller, has tested positive for the virus. First, we do hope that she has one of the mild cases and makes a full and rapid recovery. Additionally we hope that she does not infect the Vice President or anyone else.

But now let's get the President's response, courtesy of the Associated Press:

Katie Miller had tested negative Thursday, a day before her positive result.

“This is why the whole concept of tests aren’t necessarily great,” Trump said. “The tests are perfect but something can happen between a test where it’s good and then something happens.”

Can you count the number of self contradictions? Somehow in our President's mind perfect tests "aren't necessarily great" because, you know, "something happens."  Yes, a person can go from testing negative to positive. This is the reason that more testing is better, so that the spread of the virus can be curtailed as quickly as possible. If Ms. Miller had not been tested Friday, she might have spread the illness to others in the time until her next test. One of the reasons we're in this mess is that testing was not nearly as available as it should have been. I'll leave it to you to sort out why that was (and still is) the case.