I will soon be off to witness the landing of Philae - here is a prologue

The following film was made made more than decade ago and shows the path followed by Rosetta.

ESA made the film to attract young people into the team - acting, graphics, computer programming,

etc, we cannot all be one or the other, not all can be astronomers from my egoocentric

position. How to encourage and motivate people? Give them a vision in which they might

find themselves

   

For those of you who cannot wait for pictures from Philae, here is a 58minute video recored live from June 2011:

25 Years of Comet Science     

I appear about 6 times! for 2 minutes each time - but do not believe it! Unfortunately, I do like the music - WOB

Bass Lake Eclipse, ISS, Iridium Flare

Vicki and I were at Bass Lake, east side, parked off Line 15 west of Orillia, to watch a partial solar eclipse as well as the ISS and an Iridium Flare. The weather was near perfect, 10C breeze to keep the July-August bugs away for another year and no clouds at thre start. I set up the H-alpha telescope and we saw the eclipse, sunspots, prominences on the limb and a "snake" on the face of the sun. The eclipsed sun photos were taken through a mylar filter.

Vicki suggested that the ISS might have been partially in the moon's shadow since I did not pick it up until it was well passed the zenith.
Here is the ISS path vs moon shadow

The H-Alpha views showed a narrow dark line, a prominence, projected on the sun on the other side of the sun's equator (north lat) to the large sunspot group, probably #2192. The line might have been associated with #2193?

Astronomy in Killarney

had some trouble - this is a test.

Astronomy in Killarney.

Sun - white light on Tue Aug 5, 2014:

H-Alpha light on Aug 8:

Moon on "Mon"day, Aug 4 2014:

 Aristoteles, Eudoxus, Caucasus Mts, Mare Serenitatas:

 Copernicus, Eratosthenes:

 Herschel, Ptolomäus, Alphonsus:

 Mare Imbrium, Archimedes, Aristillus, Autolycus, Spizbergen Mts :

Aug 13
Saturn

Big Dipper:

 Dome and Cas - northerm Milky Way:

George lake on Mon Aug 18 with the red glow of light polution on the clouds facing Sudbury:

Autumn Colours on the move

I have been wondering about my last entry: "busy". I do not feel that is correct - active is maybe better. Out and about paddling the kayak, walking with Vicki, poweroutages with hiking poles in Scout Valley. The time since Killarney has just zoomed by.

So I just want to send a few signals that I am alive and well and living somewhere, somehow. These 2 are from Friday and from the balcony - do not have to go far to see colour.

Vicki and I have seen several, "a few" Monarch butterflies this year but numbers are a way down..

These photos were taken at Bon Echo  geology here:
http://www.geologyontario.mndmf.gov.on.ca/mndmfiles/pub/data/imaging/OFR5899/OFR5899.pdf
I like this work but there are not too many pictures - so here are some:

We went to Lake Mazinaw because of the pictographs - another blog - and because the lakes offered the posibilities to photograph the Milky Way and any Aurora (we saw none).

The above are looking south-west.
The next are looking east of North:

I think my camera has a red sensitivity issue. Anyway, there are more than a 1000 photos between the first and last one. So I was friendly to your email account, maybe? I have a new non-green Darner to post plus maybe a spreadwing. And Autumn colours and visits, and ... WOB

Autumn

I have been silent but very busy observing the changing seasons. On Sept 23, the first day into Autumn, I visited Scout Valley above Orillia. Al of Saskatoon had sent me photos from his Autumn walk and I felt
challenged to "move"! (Al gave me a course on digital photography 10 years ago) "Mouse-over" will give you my titles to the photos - can you dream up alternative titles?

There is a lookout off Old Barrie Road and that is my start:

Next I walked down the trail off to my right:

Lots to see - too much perhaps.

green darners:

Meadowhawks:

I have since gone onto the water in my kayak - but I will leave that to another day. I wish everyone good health to enjoy the weather as it comes - wob

Kingfisher

Back in May I tried to photograph kingfishers from the kajak. Yesterday I was out again trying my "luck:

 An update to the following:
http://www.nature.com/news/science-advice-1.15760?WT.mc_id=EMI_NATURE_1409_SCIADVICESUBALERT_PORFOLIO

I have been doing public out-reach programs for more than 22 years. I have tried to inform young and old about what I do, why I do it, and about the excitement of astronomy and research. However, this morning I realized how fortunate I have been, and how ill.prepared I am for dealing with some catastrophic astronomical events.

http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/1.15774!/menu/main/topColumns/topLeftColumn/pdf/512360a.pdf
(with examples from Iceland, USA, and Germany)

and

http://www.globalscienceadvice.org/

Better educated scientist and better educated politicians are required - and a better educated general public can help.

All sides might read:

http://www.globalscienceadvice.org/media/