Busy time

I just realized that it's been more than 2 months since I last posted anything. In the meantime, I've been busy with a number of meetings as a trustee of the Vancouver Centre of the RASC, participated in several public astronomy nights (both at SFU and the HRMacMillan space centre), attended a TEDx session, and reworked the computer network in our house. Since we are a close family, we also had get-togethers (dinners, mainly).

Christmas has crept up again, the tree is now up, and our granddaughters set up the "village" again. As always, we'll miss our son Derek at our family Christmas celebration. This will be the 5th Christmas since he died.

Since I probably won't blog again until next year, we wish everyone a "Very Merry Christmas" and a Happy, Healthy, and Successful New Year.

A month later

  

Venus, Moon, Mars (faint dot at lower right of the Moon), Mar 21, 2015 evening

Moon, Mars (middle), Venus, on Feb 20, 2015 in the evening sky.

The top image shows Venus, Moon, and Mars yesterday evening. For comparison, the same three as they appeared exactly four weeks ago, shown above. The Moon has completed one orbit around the Earth, The Earth has moved about thirty degrees along its once-a-year orbit around the Sun. Venus, whose orbit is inside the Earths orbit and moves around the Sun more quickly, is starting to catch up to Earth. Mars, with its orbit outside the Earths orbit, moves more slowly than Earth. Mars, on the far side of its orbit (as seen from Earth) at this time, will disappear behind the Sun in a few weeks, and will then re-appear in the morning sky. This comparison is a good demonstration of the dynamic behaviour of the solar system.
Click on the images for a larger view, or use Zoom option.

The end of a house

We've lived in our house for 42 years, and in all this time or neighbours' house has stood there. I estimate that it was built around 1930. The same people have lived in there during all the time we were in our house, Paul and Celina.

Paul died a few months ago, and Celina decided that she would sell the house. She did that about three months ago.

The house stood empty until last week. Then, a demolition crew finally arrived and started its work.  The people who handled the backhoe were experts. They even felled two big trees which we had seen grow from saplings, but had grown so big that we had concerns about them hitting our house, if a strong storm ever blew them down.

Here are some pictures:

taken by Marina Miller

taken by Marina Miller

taken by Marina Miller

taken by Marina Miller

taken by Marina Miller

totally flattened

the blue spruce, the peach and apple trees, and the big camellia bush are gone

The big cedar at the front... gone

some of tree leftovers

some of tree leftovers.

We temporarily have more open sky in the south than we've ever had. I think that the new house will be a duplex as big as is currently the norm. It'll likely fill up what used to be Celina's garden, and which we enjoyed from our back porch (see top picture). 

Can't stop progress.

The "Fixer"

A couple of days ago, a few of these mushrooms appeared in our "lawn" (mostly clover, as you can see). Mushrooms appear every year there, and they have an important function: they are a catalyst in atmospheric nitrogen transformation for use by plant and tree roots. This is a two-way street. The mushrooms, in turn, benefit by having access to plant sugars and nutrients.

Here's the nitrogen "fixation" cycle, as taken from Google images:

As shown, there are other plants which do this kind of "work". In our case, the mushrooms shown above are located in the roots of our cherry tree - maybe we'll get some of those cherries later on in the year, before the birds rob them all.

Summmer's end

This summer has been very nice, weatherwise, even though our brother-in law died a couple of months ago. We did some traveling, visiting good friends on Saltspring and in San Diego. It was a tonic to get over the family misfortunes of the last couple of years.

I purchased a new Canon model 60Da Digital SLR camera body recently. It is designed for astronomical photography (the "a" in the model number).  The old lenses I have for my Canon Rebel XT fit this camera and the adapters for the old "threaded" Pentax lenses work as well. The new camera also works well for standard daylight photography.

Here are a couple of samples:

A quick star image taken from our light-polluted back yard and processed to suppress that pollution. The only stars I could see with my eyes through this light pollution were the bright one at the top and the next brightest one near the upper right corner. The camera caught the other stars in this 10-second exposure.

A bee looking for more nectar from a flower pot on our back deck. Daylight imaging is also very good.   This camera allows for very flexible use.

I'm looking forward to get away from our city to the clear, unpolluted dark-sky areas for which this new camera is designed. We'll also keep in close touch with family here and hope to travel some more and visit more of our friends and family in both Europe and in the Americas. Perhaps I can combine both activities.

Life will go on.

Beautiful day for (solar) astronomy

 

The Sun in Hα light

Image taken on May 14 through my solar telescope

 (click on picture to enlarge)

This last Saturday, I was one of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (Vancouver Centre) volunteers at Simon Fraser University's open house. Along with two other members with their Hα scopes, I set up my own solar Hα telescope for public viewing of the Sun. The weather was exceptionally co-operative - not a cloud in the sky. Thousands members of the public came to view all manner of exhibits, and many came to look through our telescopes.

Most people had never seen the sun "in this light". The Sun is mostly Hydrogen gas, and Hα telescopes are "tuned" to exactly the frequency of the light emitted by hot Hydrogen, you see only the part of the Sun made of hydrogen. There is an immense amount of detail - prominences on the sun's edge, dark stripes on the sun (these are actually prominences seen 'from the top', against the brighter surface of the sun), bright flare areas, and sunspots. Many questions were asked; I'm sure that a lot of people walked away with a "new awareness" regarding the heavenly body which is the basis for life on earth (including us).

There was also an important announcement made: SFU will build an astronomical observatory for both science research and public outreach. The RASC will be part of this effort.

It was a great day for looking at the sun. SFU did a great job.

The December 10, 2011 lunar eclipse

Any hobby usually requires some "sacrifice". In my case, astronomy normally requires that I be awake and up while it's dark outside (the exception is when I'm using my telescopes to look [safely] at the Sun). A lunar eclipse always takes place when the Moon is full; the Moon is always exactly opposite the Sun then. At this time of year, the Sun rises low in the SE. That means that the Moon sets high in the NW.

This month's lunar eclipse occurred a couple of hours before sunrise, and I could watch it through my west-facing office window. I set up one of my cameras (a Canon Rebel XT SLR) and took some pictures through the double-paned window, and through breaks in the clouds. Before the eclipse started, the sky had been absolutely clear, but, just around the start of the eclipse, heavy clouds began to roll in. This is Vancouver, after all. Midway through the eclipse they totally obliterated any view of the eclipsed Moon. I got only one good picture through the last cloud break. These clouds kept the day dark and gray right through the next night, until the next morning.

Here are some of the pictures:

From the top down:

The Moon before entering Earth's shadow. The area at "11 o'clock" is getting darker.

Clouds are rolling in.

Three quarters into the Earth's shadow. Picture taken through a break in the clouds.

About 5 minutes before "totality" (again a break in the clouds). The star under the Moon is Iota Tauri (Iota in the constellation of Taurus, the bull)

The last "hole" in the clouds. The clouds to the right of the dark tree covered the Moon a short time later.

Midway through totality. This picture was taken just after the one above. About half-way through totality - the Moon has moved, so now is totally covered by the Earth's shadow. The brighter part of the Moon is closer to the edge of the shadow. Notice that the star Iota Tauri is now farther away from the Moon - it's a consequence of the Moon's motion in its orbit.

This is my last picture of this eclipse. A minute later, the Moon was completely covered by clouds and no longer visible.

The orange colour of the Moon in the Earth's shadow is due the sunlight being "refracted" by the Earth's atmosphere onto the Moon's surface. If you were on the Moon, you'd see the dark disk of the Earth surrounded by a reddish-orange ring (a circular sunset). From the Moon, this event is a total eclipse of the Sun. You'd have an awe-inspiring sight.

 The top picture was taken about two hours before the bottom one. It was a cold morning outside. This kind of thing did not bother me in the past, but now, in my old age, I enjoy creature comforts much more. I was glad to witness this in my nice, warm office.

An adventurous trip

We returned from a three-day repositioning cruise with an added three days in Las Vegas this last Saturday. The cruise had an "interesting" period. The "Golden Princess" is a 109,000 ton displacement cruise ship with wonderful amenities, excellent food, nice lounges, great music (including the kind of music we like to dance to). We enjoyed all this on the night we left. By midnight, just after we went to bed, the ship left Juan de Fuca Strait and turned south towards the next destination, Los Angeles. At that point we ran into an extreme low pressure system with hurricane winds and huge waves.   This extreme storm was strong enough to toss the ship around like a log, making walking almost impossible. Because of the violent motions, and winds in excess of 110km/h, access to the open decks was blocked, the swimming pools were emptied, and the ship had to reduce its speed to about 13 knots. The noises generated by the wave action kept me awake all night - the most annoying noise was the constantly clicking of the empty coat hangers in the open closest hitting each other, funnily enough. After we took them off the rack and stuffed them between our suitcases, my wife got some sleep, but I didn't.

While my wife has better "sea legs" then I, she managed to get to the dining rooms at the centre of the ship at the lower levels on the following day (which was just as violent as the night). I stayed in our cabin, which was located just one level below the open decks, and near the bow, close to the ships bridge, and tried to get some sleep. In that location, the motion is probably the most extreme. I could time and anticipate whenever the ship breached a wave, and then slammed down on the next one. At that point, everything in the cabin banged, creaked, and groaned, and I felt like being inside a drum being worked by a heavy metal band drummer.

This episode lasted just about 24 hours. When we finally got out of this extreme low north of San Francisco, the day turned into a much nicer one, and the previous day was soon an "interesting experience". The captain brought the speed up to over 22 knots, trying to make up for the lost time running slowly through the previous days' storm. None-the-less, we arrived three hours late, which played havoc with many people's travel connections. As usual, it takes about three hours to disembark the passengers and go through customs.

Our own travel connection was a bus to take us to Las Vegas - we had no trouble with that because the driver had to wait for all his passengers (who were making the same trip we were). We arrived in Las Vegas around 8pm. There were two stops at hotels before we got to ours (Harrah's). The first two got people off the bus to a well-organized reception by the travel agency; our destination had no one to "receive" us. That was somewhat chaotic and meant individual check-in. We finally got to our room after 9pm, and called it a day.  Our room was nice enough, but little things left an impression of neglect (loose shower head and hot water tap covers, a bit of rust here and there, hallway carpets showing wear and tear and so on)

The next day, after a so-so and expensive breakfast with indifferent service at Harrah's, we walked the strip, and started looking at the various hotels, especially the new, luxurious ones: Bellagio, Aria, Caesar's Palace, Excalibur, Mirage, Venitian, Wynn's, etc. They were all superior to Harrah's. If we get to L.V. again, we'll probably stay at one of those. They incorporate large "shopping concourses" with many nice restaurants and other amenities. In the evening, we enjoyed watching both the "volcano" at the Mirage, and the "water ballet" at the Bellagio. Since we are not gamblers, these activities were our main occupation.

The shows which might have been of interest to us (Cirque de Soleil, and other high quality ones) were always either sold out or had long box-office line-ups. We had only two days in L.V., so we passed on them. Most of the other shows were "imitation shows": Sinatra, Elvis, Rat Pack, etc. They were expensive, and, since we have seen the real artists in the past, of little interest to us.

There are very few benches to sit down in L.V. - obviously on purpose: the businesses want you to spend time in the ubiquitous casinos (almost all hotels have one or more - they all look alike, and are just as noisy). You are also almost always forced to walk through them in order to get to the shops and amenities. The nicer hotels had easy chairs and tables in the long hallways, away from the casinos, which enabled us to sit down to a leisurely coffee or ice cream and watch people (which both of us enjoy).

We went to downtown Las Vegas on the following day - bought a day pass on the "Deuce" (a double-decker bus system which runs 24 hours a day). This proved to be the most efficient transportation for us. Fremont street downtown has a two block long arched cover which is actually the worlds largest video display. It's advertised as the "Fremont Experience". We arranged to be there early for the 7pm "showing" - it was a bit of a disappointment. While technically impressive, with a Hallowe'en-related theme, the show was only 7 minutes long. The real fun part for us was watching people from a sidewalk seat at a Starbuck's - the bikers had a convention; it made for some interesting viewing.

The flight home was somewhat convoluted. We were flown from L.V. to Phoenix, changed planes there, and flew right back over L.V. on the way home. Airport security is highly inconvenient (body scanners, numerous identity checks, etc.) and takes a lot away from the actual flying, which we both enjoy. The flight itself (US Airways) was on time, we actually arrived home early.

So, what is our overall impression? Las Vegas is a city of "imitation" and flamboyance, with relatively little cultural substance. It exists to "pull money out of your pocket", and that may be it's "talent", if it can be called that. Superficiality comes to mind; everything is "show"(off). Some of the new hotels are really beautiful from an architectural point and can be considered to be counterpoints to the shallowness evident elsewhere. We may get there again, someday, passing through, but it's unlikely that we'll make a special trip with this city as the destination.

Pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mimiandpapa/6213529854/in/set-72157627696025357/

A little cheer on a dreary day

As many of you know, I'm interested in Astronomy. Accordingly, above is a picture of a "Stargazer Lily" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilium_%22Stargazer%22, of which we have some sitting in a vase on our living room table. Notice the "liquid sugar" on the stem to lure insects, I would think. That's probably what gives these flowers their heavily sweet odour, which seems to be particularly noticeable in the evenings. Click on the picture for a larger image.

Below is a picture of the camelia "bush" in our neighbours' back yard - these blossoms were not there yesterday. Click on the image.

This has been a rather unpleasant week, and not just because of the weather. Derek has not been feeling well, and yesterday we received notice that a very good friend of ours, Al, had died. We've known Al and Ernie, his lifelong partner (over 55 years), for more than 25 years. Al was almost 85 years old, and he had not been in shape for the last four years. A sad day for all of us who knew Al.

I posted these pictures to show that there is always something beautiful in nature. A little cheer on a dreary day...

Spider

Spider is back - a new net and more wasps caught. I used my trusted Canon XT and uploaded the pictures here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mimiandpapa/sets/72157624814683502/

Spider - a set on Flickr

www.flickr.com










Two of these pictures were taken about a month ago. If it is the same spider it sure has grown since then. Judging from the latest two images he (or she - I can't tell) has been successful enough securing meals in that time.

Playing with a new computer

A couple of days ago, just as the latest weather front was approaching our area, my wife noticed an unusual cloud formation almost overhead.  I quickly grabbed her little digital camera and took a picture.

Since I just purchased a new iMac a couple of weeks ago, and am still "getting the hang of it", I decided to play around with a third-party, inexpensive graphics program I bought on-line (Pixelmator, recommended by Derek) to play around with the cloud picture.









This is the original image, including a flaw in the camera which appears when the zoom is set to higher than 1.5 ( I'm getting the camera looked after under warranty).












This is a negative image, after painting out the flaw, and rotating the original. To me, it looks like a number of jet fighter planes flying in formation. Maybe aliens?

Part of the family?

Today, I decided to give my comfortable old slippers an honourable "burial".  As the oldest "member", they joined our slipper family at Sechelt, on the Sunshine Coast, and served me well for over ten years. They were "born" at a shop that specializes in sheepskin products; the shop is still in business, so far as I know. Over the years, the left slipper has had a couple of duct tape repairs, but now it's time to say goodbye. Perhaps we'll get a replacement - I do occasionally go to the sunshine coast on business.

A happy occasion

Yesterday, our family and friends took part in one of the happy events which are part of a family's history: Our niece Tarya married the love of her life, Taylor James (T.J. to all of us). We are proud of both, and wish them a long, happy, and healthy life together.

Many pictures were taken; the ones we took are on flickr at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mimiandpapa/sets/72157624842227574

This morning, we had more happy news: Tarya's uncle became a grandfather. Congratulations to his family, too.

Another family occasion

In order to celebrate the upcoming wedding of Tarya and T.J., we had an unconventional "shower" for both of them, with family and  friends. Here are some pictures:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mimiandpapa/sets/72157624791112672/

A family reunion

Every now-and-then, our entire Canadian family contingent comes together to celebrate an important occasion, anniversary, or birthday. This happened yesterday, and Hilkka took these pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mimiandpapa/sets/72157624514188971/

Click on the link.

Little spider

The weather has been marvellous for the last two weeks or so. We take advantage of this; we have breakfast on the back porch or the courtyard, eat lunch and supper there, all surrounded by sunshine and flower pots (meticulously tended to by my wife), and generally enjoy the summer. In the late afternoon, we pull down a sunshade. About an hour before sunset we noticed a little spider's web, being illuminated by sunlight at just the right angle, which a little spider had put up after we had lowered the sunshade. It was suspended from that sunshade, and the downpipe from the roof. The web must have been constructed within an hour by that little spider. The sunlight passed through the web just like through a spectroscopic grating - which breaks up the light (like a prism) into its constituent colours, mostly reds, because the sun was so low in the sky. It was worth a picture.

The web stayed there for a couple of days (we took care not to disturb it when rolling up the sunshade); in all that time we saw a trace of only one "catch". It seems like a lot of work for that little spider to find only one meal in all that time. Then, the next morning, both web and spider had disappeared without a trace. Did the spider "eat up" the web, so that it could spin another one somewhere else?

The candle

My wife and I usually enjoy our evenings with a glass of red wine. We often light some candles and relax on the sofa. Last night, while we were watching the Paralympic opening ceremonies, I noticed a "tail" on one of the burning candles.

This looks like an unusual wax bead. Perhaps it is wax which was closer to the wick and melted during the earlier part of the candle burning, and then flowed over the edge, down the side of the candle. Now that it is farther from the wick, it seems to sit just below its melting point. Any other ideas?

And here it is...

A light rain certainly didn't dampen the Olympic spirit - here it is: the torch a couple of blocks from our house.

Recuperating

Derek had his chemo yesterday. Airdrie tells us that he spent most of the night sleeping - with the help of the anti-nausea drug, which seems to help quite a bit. He still has a bottle of chemo medicine attached until tomorrow, so he'll probably feel lousy for the whole weekend. This controlled poisoning is no fun for any of us, least of all Derek himself.


Today, our grandchildren set up our "Christmas village"

and helped with setting up the Christmas tree. It was a welcome activity for all of us.

Vancouver Harbour

Derek's post of October 13, referring to the change in the Vancouver skyline over the last 50 years or so prompted me to dig out a couple of my own pictures of the Vancouver harbour view. I photographed the top image in 1956, the bottom one dates from 2008. Both pictures were taken from the same spot (within a couple of meters, or so). While the cameras and angle-of-view for the two source images are very different, I made an attempt to crop and resize the pictures in such a way as to make them appear similar. Click on the image for a larger view.

The change is astounding. The only edifice I can discern in both pictures is the spire of the Holy Rosary Cathedral on Dunsmuir Street in downtown Vancouver. The arrow in the top picture points to it. You can also spot it among the high rises in about the same relative position in the lower picture.

The two tallest structures in 1956 are the Vancouver Hotel on the right, and the Marine Building on the left. Both buildings are still in existence, but they are obscured by the newer high-rise buildings which have since sprung up.

Ah, progress!!