astropicnic

RASC members checking the weather at sunset,
hoping for clear skies.


(Hey, I'm on Fark.com again, this time with an ostrich. See the entry dated "2004-05-13 04:16:07 PM". Thanks to Leslie Ambedian and EricTheMage for the heads-up.)

So I admit I wasn't overly thrilled when Jeff suggested we attend a picnic hosted by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada near Collingwood on the way home from the cottage, even though I knew our friend Andy would be there, mainly because I figured I'd be waaaay out of my element.

I pictured a whole bunch of grizzled astronomers sitting around comparing telescopes and talking astrotechtalk while ignorant types like me sat in the corner pretending to be fascinated by the latest issue of Sky and Telescope, a paper plate of atrophied cheese cubes by my side. Not exactly the way I wanted our cottage week to end, really.

But Jeff was very keen on attending, and I did enjoy our cottage skywatching evening earlier in the week, so I agreed to go.





Anyway ... I enjoyed myself *much* more than I expected. :-)

For one thing, the gathering was held on a scenic hilltop in a house that had been generously donated to the RASC, and established as the RASC Toronto Centre E.C. Carr Astronomical Observatory in 1998. Gorgeous scenery, comfortable house, great spread of munchables.



Biggest bbq I've ever seen.


For another thing, the astronomers were much more friendly and patient with newbies than I expected. They generously allowed anyone (even inexperienced types like me) to look through their telescopes, were more than willing to answer questions.

And they were fun to hang out with; I can much better understand why Jeff and Andy are so keen about these gatherings...not only is there lots of interesting astronomystuff, but this is a great group of people as well.



Another picnic activity: rockets!


I got a huge kick out of seeing people so enthusiastic about their hobby, and I have to admit that their enthusiasm is infectious. The atmosphere reminded me a lot of a good filk gathering, except people had telescopes instead of guitars, and were a lot more anxious about the weather. :-) Newcomers were encouraged; you didn't have to be an avid astronomer to feel welcome.



Taking a photo of the sun through a polarizing filter.


I got to see the sun through a telescope for the first time! VERY cool. I could even see the sunspots! A mylar covering on the lens made it possible to view the sun without damage to one's eyes.



I got to see the sun through a telescope for the first time
through the telescope above. Many thanks to Katrina for letting
me use her scope. (Katrina not in photo)


The observatory had a cool sliding roof that could be moved, Skydome-like, when you wanted to do some observing. I was immensely curious, but wasn't sure who was allowed inside. I figured you needed some kind of special permission.



Jeff and Andy. Jeff is trying out someone's HUGE pair
of binoculars.


When I saw someone coming out, however, I couldn't help myself and asked if it was possible to take a peek. Surprised, he said, "Of course! Everyone's welcome; come in and take a look around." So I went in and was immediately intimidated by the telescopes set up in the observatory area, which were bigger than any others I've seen up close.



Part of an inverted arc! Not exactly sure what it is, but apparently
it's rare. It appeared above the sun yesterday afternoon.
Not the same thing as a rainbow, but related to sundogs somehow, I think.


Two guys were obviously still doing setting up stuff, so I sat quietly in a corner (wrapped in two blankets...it was getting cold) and watched. A few minutes later, I got to look through this 16" telescope as well as some other scopes:





After dusk, everyone went to red light mode to preserve night vision and to permit astrophotography. The house itself had been fixed up with red lights as well as regular lightbulbs. I knew it was important to ONLY use the red lights when moving around the house, else the formerly friendly astronomers would likely not be so friendly anymore. :-)

At "star parties", attendees are encouraged to bring red flashlights instead of regular ones, or cover the lens of a normal light with a red filter. When parking near the viewing field, you're supposed to disconnect the overhead light in your car or cover it with red tape.



Trillium I saw on a walk I took during the picnic.


My nightwatching stamina isn't as long as Jeff's and I had been up since 6:30 a.m., so after a while I opted to go inside and see what videos were showing. They were watching THE TWO TOWERS!!! (As some of you already know, I'm somewhat of a fan :-) ). So I curled up on the couch and happily settled into Middle Earth, dozed off a couple of times, woke in time for the battle at Helm's Deep.

Fun evening, though getting back to Toronto around 2:30 a.m. wasn't fun. Astronomy is definitely a hobby for nighthawks, not morning people like me. Still, I enjoyed myself more than I expected and have to admit that I've become more interested in astronomy recently because of Jeff and the enthusiasm of the RASC-types...who knows?

If you're interested in finding out more about the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, check out the following links:

RASC main page: includes lots of interesting resource links, including educational links.

RASC Toronto Center



Someone lit a bonfire as darkness fell.

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orkut

Many thanks to Julian Fitzherbert for his help with today's My Life In A Nutshell strip, inspired by my Blathering about my first dip in the lake this year. Julian is a senior research geophysicist in the UK whom I've never met, but we've exchanged a few e-mails over the years. Hope to meet him eventually. :-) For those in the Toronto area: An interview with my sister will be appearing in the Toronto Star today, in the Saturday Careers section! Played around a bit in Orkut yesterday. The people at Yahoo have got to be sweating buckets. Very cool idea for an online community. Invitation only, linked by friendships and acquaintanceships, and no e-mail harvesting. You can't access ANY of the content without a membership. You can invest as much or as little as time in the community as you'd like and still be able to get enjoyment/use out of its offerings. There's an internal messaging system, but you can opt to get messages directly sent to your regular e-mail if you prefer, or to not get messages at all. No membership fee. I've always been fascinated by the whole online community thing, and Orkut has a ton of potential (and it's only in beta version!) for both business and social networking. You can fill out as much or as little in your profile as you'd like, for example, and there are separate sections for professional info and "info for potential romantic interests", depending on your goals. It all looks pretty benevolent so far; you can give karma ratings to various people on your list, but only positive ratings, no negative. i.e. You can anonymously boost a friend's karma ratings with "cool" or "sexy" points if you'd like, but can't assign "bad" points to someone you don't like. Mini-communities within Orkut range from the very silly to uber-technical to academic. Joining a community doesn't obligate you to anything, so I've joined a bunch to check them out, including online comics, sandwiches, shakuhachi bamboo flutes, filking, freelance writing, bargain travel, copyright reform, collaborative filtering, online communities, Logic users, digital photography, songwriters and singers network, running, tea and social network analysis. It's fun to check out what communities other people have signed up for. If I was still running Inkspot, I'd have a much easier time finding telecommuting help because of Orkut; you can potentially get a ton of info about a person's personality, interests, business contacts and experience by just browsing their profile. I wouldn't be surprised if Orkut eventually added a jobseeker area; the venue seems perfect for this. There are lots of ways that Orkut needs to improve to make it my ideal online community, but IMHO it's already way ahead of Yahoo despite being only a beta version. I wrote to the Orkut support people about a technical problem I was having, and they wrote back within a couple of hours with a solution. Looking forward to seeing how Orkut develops over the next while, and am especially curious about the nature of its association with the people at Google (what links/shared technology will be evident). I was hunting around for a photo to post as a userpic in Orkut, but realized I didn't have any current pics that would be appropriate. One of the disadvantages of always being the one with the camera is that you're never actually IN any photos unless you stick a camera in someone's hand and say, "Here, can you take a picture of me?" Or take one yourself, which is what I did: Me, in the boathouse yesterday. Rained yesterday, but Jeff didn't care...he got his clear night for comet-viewing a few evenings ago. I didn't care, either, and jumped in the lake despite the rain after my afternoon sauna. It seemed a tad warmer, so I tried swimming a bit. Only a bit, though...I abandoned the attempt after about fifteen seconds when the cold verged on actual pain. Leaving the cottage today. :-( An origami hummingbird that Jeff made. The little notch cut into its chest means you can display it on any upstanding edge, like a lampshade. May 2004 comments: Read Blatherchat | Post in Blatherchat | Livejournal

Sean Bean and spiders and penny whistles

Some of you complained about yesterday's spider picture, saying that I gave no reference about size. Humble apologies for that...I've added a reference object (my head) to give you a better idea of the actual size of the arachnid in question: Ok, ok. It was actually about 4-5 inches across (the spider, not my head), and the smaller spider was about 2-2.5 inches across. And no, I didn't run screaming, though I was pretty startled; I only noticed when I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye, and then I saw the other spider as well. In answer to some other questions: I actually don't mind spiders as long as they don't jump on me. Anything with more than eight legs does freak me out, though (like centipedes, yuk). And no, I didn't have my camera with me in the outhouse...I went down to the boathouse to get it, came back to take the photo. Then, OF COURSE, I carefully captured both spiders in a special spider-friendly net we keep in the outhouse for just this sort of occasion, and spirited them into the forest to a wonderful place full of other curious spiders (sort of like that spider place in the second Harry Potter movie) where my outhouse spiders could live the rest of their lives in joy and peace and arachnid harmony, joining their spidery little legs in a comradely fashion and singing the spider version of the Whoville song. Was amused by the LJ posting by my pal Graham Leathers, after a slew of "good god, that looks scary" messages: "BEAUTIFUL SHOT!! And what a magnificent specimen. That is in fact a fishing spider, (yes some call them dock spiders) they are common pretty much wherever there is standing water. They eat mostly insects but are known to chow down on small fish and tadpoles as well. They are a good size, body roughly 5 cm (2 inches) and a leg span of up to 13 cm (5 inches). So, yeah, I guess the size you're seeing it there is pretty true to scale. Spiders don't get much bigger in this part of the world. They are completely harmless to people. I had a chat with one when I backpacked into caribou lake one time. They don't make very interesting conversation. All they talk about are neurotoxins and surface tension and a fair bit about insects. For those of you terrified of spiders, I may suggest you read up on them a bit. They become a lot less scary when you stop looking at them as creepy eight legged beasties and start looking at them as organisms adapted to a certain way of life. After all, of the billions of species there are, that we know of, in the world, less than ten are potentially harmful to people. Besides, you're a hundred times the size of the biggest of them, so who should really be scared? I'll get off my naturalist's soap box, now." Graham also points out that the picture of my beetle the other day was actually a photo of a giant water bug, family Belostmatidae, genus Lethocersus. From Gray: "Theses beasties are highly predatory and can inflict a painful bite. Handle with care, or just don't touch it. Eats aquatic insects and small vertebrates. They are inclined to leave the water and fly about and you may see them around lights." I'm lucky to have Gray as my friend. :-) Jeff was working on a cottage project in the forest yesterday, by the way, and says the blackflies have started biting. I played penny whistle yesterday afternoon, sitting on the dock in the sunshine. Haven't played any in a while, and it felt good. I need to start playing whistle with Urban Tapestry, though I'm somewhat intimidated by amazing penny whistle players out there like Chris Conway and Jü Honisch! May 2004 comments: Read Blatherchat | Post in Blatherchat | Livejournal

lazy cottage day

Wow, Jeff posted in Blatherchat. I think that could be a first for him (if you're curious, he does browse Blatherchat comments from time to time, though not LJ). Big dock spider (I think that's what it is, anyway) that I met in the outhouse, sitting on the wall beside my head. Smaller spider that was sitting beside the one above. Lazy day yesterday, at least for me. Did some reading, napped, did some writing, cartooning. At the end of the day, Jeff and I watched Casablanca on his laptop up in our sleeping cabin. I dozed off while he watched the special features, but stayed awake long enough to see "Carrotblanca" (the Bugs Bunny version :-)). Haven't seen Casablanca in a while...geez, I had forgotten what a great movie this is. Ingrid Bergman is dead gorgeous. Weird hearing so many lines I'm used to hearing as corny and cliched in their original context. ("Here's looking at you, kid", etc.) Tea packets I brought to the cottage, includes tea from Jodi (chai spice decaf) and Rand (everything else except for Vanilla Hazelnut and Ginger). Yay, I love tea from friends. :-) Sage Tyrtle sent me e-mail about my bears blathering: ====== "I've been enjoying visiting your site over the past month. I'm surprised I haven't run across you before; I created my first site in '95. Anyway, I'm up at 3AM with a nasty cold and your bear story made me laugh. Something similar happened to me a few years ago, when we were all living in a yurt in the woods. I thought you might get a kick out of reading it. ====== Weakened by a spruce budworm infestation, this tree fell over during a windstorm. Fortunately, the cabin did not sustain any damage. May 2004 comments: Read Blatherchat | Post in Blatherchat | Livejournal

night magic

Just after sunset, from the Gibsons' dock yesterday evening.


Jeff and I decided to go for a paddle and hike yesterday, and took our "good" canoe out for its first adventure of the year. By "good", I mean a custom-made canoe that my dad-in-law gave Jeff and me as a wedding present, built by Danny Gibson (eldest son of Dan Gibson of Solitudes fame). We came to the cottage for our honeymoon, and found an unpainted canoe waiting for us in the boathouse, with a note from JBR saying that Danny would paint it any colour we chose.

I love this canoe. It's tippier than regular tripping canoes, but it's also much more responsive in the water. We tend to leave it at the cottage and take the battered-up aluminum canoe, though, when we know were going to be paddling through places that might scratch it up.



Jeff patiently lets me take a picture of him before
he sets off on a portage.


Anyway, our day trip yesterday involved two portages and three lake paddles. Hey, even I did some paddling yesterday! Only a very little bit because I wasn't sure how my arms would be, but it seemed to go okay. Might do some more later this week.

The blackflies are out, but most of them haven't started biting yet. Hopefully they will remain in ignorance until after we've gone home, though both Jeff and I did get bitten once each. They swarmed around our heads on the trails, and must have been mightily annoyed (as annoyed as insects can get, anyway) at having two big potential meals so close yet not being able to do anything about it.



Sam Lake.


The skies remained blissfully clear last night, resulting in spectacular nighttime viewing. After dinner, Jeff sets up his telescope on the Gibsons' dock, and I set up a comfortable spot using two life vests and a couple of blankets.

Then we sit and wait for night to fall, watching the light in the sky gradually fade, listening to the loons calling to each other, the lovelorn chorus of the peepers (tree frogs) swelling and lapsing. And finally, peering through the telescope, Jeff exclaims that he sees the comet. I come over to take a look.

And there it is, a smudge of light with a definite tail. VERY cool.

Jeff is ecstatic; the sky is -completely- clear. And away from the city lights, the night sky is incredible...looking up at all those stars, I feel like I'm falling. I can't tear my eyes away from the sky.

Jeff points out Jupiter and Mars, Venus and Saturn. I will never get tired of seeing the rings of Saturn through a telescope. I get to see the Sombrero Galaxy, and the Leo triad (sorry, Andy, can't remember the name exactly, and Jeff's still asleep)...a trio of galaxies. GALAXIES.

It's easy to get a bit jaded sometimes, what with all the special effects in sf movies these days and space talk in the news. But when it comes right down to it, seeing all this stuff with my own eyes is still pretty darned amazing.



One of the portages involved a tricky (especially for
someone carrying a canoe!) balancing act on a log across a swamp.


I get cold and sleepy after a couple of hours, curl up on some life jackets on the deck under two blankets while Jeff continues to observe through his telescope. After what seems like only a few minutes, I hear Jeff calling my name.

Half-awake and somewhat crabby, I grunt a reply.

"Northern Lights!" he says, and I sit up immediately, wide awake.

And there it is, the Aurora Borealis: a curtain of ghostly light, with pale fingers flickering across the sky like a living thing.

For me, it's the closest thing to magic.

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