I wonder if

 I recall my 1st solar eclipse - June 30, 1954.

And there have been some memorable one since - 1999 at a youth hostel and 25km of grid-lock afterwards.  And last year's panic in educational circles..

Friday morning there was a total lunar eclipse - and I have memories of a couple of them but no dates. One was so cold that film in my camera became brittle and tore . In another occasion I used a 15cm  refractor in the north dome at DDO to observe and time the eclipse of lunar craters by the Earth's shadow, I used a tape recorder with time signals as well as time the  observations. I wrote a computer program to calculate  the radius of the Earth's shadow based on the time of the passage of the  shadow over a crater - I had a list of some 20 craters and in some cases included times for the shadow tangent to the crater rim as well as for any central peak.I did this for ingress and egress. In a UofT computer course I had already written and debugged routines for interpolation of values from the ephemeris  ( Chebyshev and Lagrange polynomials)

Let us look at the initial   phase of the eclipse around Thursday midnight into Friday morning, March 14, 2025:

 The penumbral phase is difficult to see so the rest of the series is umbral-total.

 

It is clear that shadow has a round edge:

 Aristotle argued for a spherical Earth.  

Around this time, the idea of a flat earth was coming into question. The proof provided by Aristotle was a moon's eclipse. When the moon eclipses, the boundary is always convex.
So if the eclipses are due to the interposition of the earth, the shape must be caused by its circumference

One can also see that the Moon is moving relative to the background stars.

 

The Moon is moving left through the Earth's shadow. I have marked some stars for reference.

 

 It was a mild, -3°C, calm, night, maybe some cirrus. I had some obligations on Friday morning and so did not complete the series of photos necessary  to show the Moon pull away from the stars on the right, and also show the drift of the Earth's shadow with time. 

I think the ancients knew a lot about the motion of the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars on the sky. However, it also gave some power to control others - perhaps little has changed?

 

WOB

 

Northern Hawk Owl

 It was several years ago that I saw my first and to date only Northern Hawk Owl.

 It was a daytime encounter.

And it lasted for weeks  - the owl was active and attentive during the day.

 

 

 

I wonder if it is the same one that has returned? 

WOB

Thoughts from the past

 Is Saturday night bath night?

 

 

Birds of a feather, I guess?

 

 So not all spiders are arachnids!

 

 But all the feathers?

 

 White-crowned Pigeon

 

 Reflecting?

 

 WOB

 Reality is a mirage!

 

 I guess this is March madness when one has cabin fever? 

Chill, baby, chill.

Sunday afternoon picnic

 Many people drop in - the view is restful and satisfying.

 

 

I was wearing snowshoes for the occasion - WOB

A Bridge

 The last blog entry suggested a new unit of measuring snow in towns - "the truck", I feel it would create confusion since trucks right now are trucking snow away to make volune available for the next snow fall clearance. Still it is to be considered along with a density of people - milli-people per square meter.

 

It brings to mind a bridge I once saw in the middle of a field - no roads anywhere. What was it bridging? And why was it built, for what purpose? The Romans built their  aqueducts in sections by teams of paid  workers. After surveying the land, the bridges were built and then the connecting canals.  I lived near the Eifel Aqueduct and saw the fit of canal to bridge wasn't always perfect. Here is an example at Vussem:

 

However, yesterday I encountered a bridge not going anywhere:

 Not even clear what was under it except for snow.

 

WOB

My Name is Cliff

 

It was on Monday Feb 17 that I watched the truck disappear:

 I saw the truck back into that driveway and disappear.

The temperature that day was below -10°C. Then came the hot air from the south. With CO2 and acid rain, lots of acid. 

By Feb 27, 2025, CO2 levels had reach 426.62 ppm

That was up from 423.75 in November 2024

The rains came in Tuesday Feb 25,  warm from the south,  greater than +10°C . I am concerned that these may be  early "April" showers about to bring early "May" flowers when the ground is still covered in thick wet heavy snow - a sponge.

It might be an ominous Spring for "Daffodils":

 

 When the snow melts_

 

On Friday Feb 28 the truck was found!

 

 Note how the level of snow has fallen - the street sign in front of the side of the truck is now 3/4 clear of snow ironically making it hard to distinguish it from the truck.

 Not really?

 

 "Canada" is always ready to rescue "damsels" et al in distress. 

We know our good fortune is to have the pot of gold in Canada -

 

 WOB

Venus in the arms of the Moon

 It was clear for our region last night. So we braved the cold and the very icy wind off lake Simcoe   to see a 47-hour old Moon 5% illuminated:

 And Venus

 

 And then we are not as young as we remembered!

 

 So we returned home.

 

 - too frozen to be wobbily, but still WOB