Saturday, December 12, 2015

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.

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Back to reality.



This past month, we traveled to Germany for a reunion of cousins and a visit to one of my two living aunts, my mother's younger sister, who is now 102 years old. She is living in a care home, still sharp of mind, uses a walker to get around, but has been totally deaf for over 40 years. Nonetheless, she speaks normally, but we "talk" to her by writing down whatever we want to say to her. Fortunately, one of her two daughters lives nearby and visits her every couple of days. We had a great time together.

The cousins' get-together was arranged as a boat trip in an area southeast of Berlin, called the "Spreewald". This is a marshy area, drained by channels and canals amounting to a total of a couple of thousand kilometers. These channels are very shallow, if you fall out of the boat, you can walk out (waist-deep). The boat trips are a major income source for the people who live there. Our boat was equipped with tables and shelves which held a variety of alcoholic beverages - food can be purchased at "roadside" establishments.

Cousins in the boat

After the boat trip, we all gathered at a local restaurant and spent a couple of hours there, talking about things which you talk about at a family reunion, the good things, the sad things, possible future visits, etc.

We spent almost a week in Berlin - it is one of the most dynamic cities in the world. Museums, exhibitions, art and science venues, world class shopping, unique local and international food... one can spend many weeks there and still not see all. My sister and her husband (who also live in the Vancouver area) also came to the reunion separately from us, and we met and stayed at the same hotel in the centre of Berlin. It was great fun for my sister and me (our spouses tagged along) to visit our childhood haunts, schools, and other places we were once at home in, and which we left 60 years ago. We also enjoyed going out to local restaurants for some fine, local food and beer. We don't often do that here in Vancouver, usually we get together in our homes.

Our travel to Germany involved a hitch. We had booked the flight including a day-long layover in Toronto. The new Airport rail line to downtown Toronto recently opened there, a la Vancouver's airport line, but the fare is more than $40 per trip per person - outrageous! Therefore, we decided to stay at our hotel, and had a pleasant evening, with a very good dinner and drinks at the bar.

Next morning, we checked our flight time from Toronto to Frankfurt, and, much to our dismay, found it cancelled. The Lufthansa pilots were on a one-day strike (long distance flights only)!

Naturally, we made efforts to get information regarding alternatives. Lufthansa phone lines were not answered, and our hotel desk had no information either. We took the shuttle from the hotel to the airport to try our luck there. At the airport, the Lufthansa counters were eventually served by one lonely lady, whose job it was to re-book and re-arrange the flights for the affected passengers. After a one-hour wait in line we finally got to that lady (for whom we felt immensely sorry), and found out that we had already been re-booked on Air Canada to Zurich, and from there on Swiss Air to Berlin. I guess that, having booked the whole trip on business class, we had received preferential treatment.

The Air Canada flight to Zurich was the best flight experiences we've ever had. The passenger pods were roomy and comfortable, the service was excellent, and the plane was brand-new (it was on its 5th flight, we were told). We had 40 minutes in Zurich to get through customs and onto the Swiss Air flight. It all worked smoothly, and, surprise, we (and our luggage!) arrived in Berlin 3 hours ahead of the original schedule. The unseen airline people who work in the background deserve great credit for how all this was handled.

After our family reunion, we spent a couple more weeks in other parts of Germany, visiting friends, who had planned something for us on every one of those days. We get together quite often in other parts of the world, so we had much to talk about and, of course, lubricated these occasions with the appropriate amount of food and drinks. These get-togethers have become more sedate over the last few years - we're all getting older, and several of our friends have died. None-the-less, a great time was had by all.

Our trip back went without a hitch. We arrived on time - tried out skytrain to get home. It works quite well, but we arrived at rush hour, so the trains were crowded. Traveling with luggage on skytrain is a bit of a hassle; there is no provision to store luggage.

It was a great vacation. We are now getting over our jet lag; back to reality!



Saturday, August 22, 2015

A busy summer

Hard to believe that I last posted two months ago. Time flies.

This summer, considering the long dry spell and reasonably clear sky, I've been busy astronomically. The new Trottier observatory at SFU has taken some of my time, along with a number of public astronomy events organized by both SFU and the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada's Vancouver centre. These events, for instance "Starry Night" at SFU, the Regional Parks' Perseid Meteor shower watch in Aldergrove, Deas Island Park, and other local activities all involved the RASC and it's various volunteers.

During the last couple of months, we set up our telescopes for the public to see objects such as the Moon, the planets Saturn, Venus, and Mars, open and globular star clusters, far-away galaxies, nebulae, and exploded stars. Many thousands of people took part in these activities. The Public has a deep interest in things astronomical. It is particularly gratifying to see so many young people show up at these gatherings. It is the first step to get involved in science, because astronomy involves many disciplines (physiscs, chemistry, biology, geology, for example).

Here is a link to an article, as it appeared on the website of the RASC (http://rasc-vancouver.com/) regarding the opening of Simon Fraser University’s Trottier Observatory and Science Courtyard. It describes the manifold purposes of this great addtion to the university and the co-operation between SFU and the RASC, written by professor Howard Trottier:

http://rasc-vancouver.com/trottier-observatory-and-science-courtyard-at-sfu-wheels-up/

Many thanks are owed to the Trottier family, whose generous gift contributes so much to the scientific community.

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Catch up

On June 20, the Moon, Jupiter, and Venus appeared in the evening sky as pictured. Venus has been chasing Earth since the beginning of the year and is slowly catching up. Jupiter has moved from the middle of the night into the evening sky (largely due to Earth's motion around the sun - it's an effect of perspective).

Venus is the closest planet to us and orbits the sun inside the Earth's orbit, and therefore moves faster. It is almost the same size  as Earth, but its surface is submerged in an atmosphere which is about 90 times denser then Earth's. It's surface temperature is about 450 degrees C (900 F). It's a true hell (lead melts).

Jupiter is our solar systems largest planet. You could put about 1500 planets of Venus size into Jupiter. That huge planet orbits 5 times as far from the sun as the Earth. In this image, Jupiter is positioned on the far side of its orbit, and will disappear behind the sun in a couple of months. At this point, it is about six-and-a-half times as far away from us as the sun.


In the spirit of catching up: On the third of May we commemorated the 4th anniversary of our son's death from colon cancer - always an occasion for some tears. 

On May 22nd, I turned 76. It's hard to believe, I still think that I'm in my prime. The little aches and pains accompanying old age say otherwise, however. So the truth is that I'm an old "fuddy-duddy". On May 29, I had a colonoscopy done, in view of our family history. Three polyps were found and removed. Fortunately, none of them showed any evidence of cancer.

Right now, both my wife and I are fighting a persistent cough; it makes sleeping restless. It's been making the rounds in our family - we're the last ones to "catch the bug".

At the moment, I'm involved in a process arranging the running of the new SFU astronomical observatory for it's portion of the Vancouver RASC's* time on the telescope. It's an observatory dedicated to both individual and public observing. More about this in a later post.

*Royal Astronomical Society of Canada


Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Happy Travellers


This month, we spent three weeks in California, driving to see friends in various parts of the state. The main reason we went down was to celebrate our close friend Henry's eighty-fifth birthday in La Jolla. Over the years we have visited him and his wife, we've gotten to know many of their friends, and most of the family. We were one of four "international" couples; the others were from Sweden and Germany. There were about forty of us present. A great time was had by all - the festivity included a catered Mexican Lunch and a wonderful nine-person Mariachi band, which played for at least two hours.

Our fiftieth wedding anniversary occurred a week later. Seeing that so many of our friends had assembled, we arranged to celebrate that occasion after Henry's "big one". We had not announced this ahead of time, so it was a surprise to all. These anniversary celebrations took place in smaller groups at "Piatti's" Restaurant in La Jolla Shores, and at several "happy hours" at local friends' homes. Needless to say that the drinks flowed liberally, and food was equally plentiful (we have proof: our waistlines tell us so).

After about a week of this, we decided to wend our way home. We stayed with friends in Los Angeles and Chico and continued our anniversary entertainment in that fashion.

This car trip included (in chronological order) Medford, Oregon, and in Calfornia we stpped at Santa Nella, Solvang, La Jolla, Long Beach, Santa Nella again, Chico, Roseburg, Oregon, and Portland. We love travelling by car; you can be very flexible about your route. None of these stops were arranged in advance, we decided where to go while we were on the road.

It was a great trip.

Sunday, March 22, 2015

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.

Saturday, February 21, 2015

A matter of perspective

There was a nice combination of the Moon, Mars, and Venus visible in the West last evening. This picture was cropped from original, taken with 200mm lens, ASA 800, 1/20 sec, handheld. Moon, Mars, and Venus aligned in evening sky. The Moon (top) is closest (360,000km), Venus (bottom) is about 213 million km away, and Mars (middle) 330 Million km.

The relative positions of the planets in February 2015 are shown in the scanned image at the bottom. The Earth is shown in green. Imagine yourself looking from the Earth towards Venus and Mars. Yesterday (February 20 around 7:30 pm) you would have seen the two planets aligned as shown below, located far beyond the Moon (the little black dot labelled "Moon"). The orbits are not to scale. If the picture were drawn to scale, Venus would be about 3 meters and Mars 4.6 meters from the Earth.
 



 
Orbit schematic scanned from Sky and Telescope magazine.




Saturday, January 24, 2015

Into the New Year

My wife and I hope that all of you had a great holiday season. We enjoyed our usual Christmas family get-together.  For once, the two of us had a "stay-at-home" New Year all by ourselves. After watching the New York time ball at 9pm, we raised a toast or two, reminisced about past riotous New Years' parties here at home, in California and Mexico, and family members and friends who have died, and went to bed around 10pm - getting old, I guess.

A number of astronomical events (including a relatively rare triple shadow transit on Jupiter) were rained/fogged out during this month. A clear sky break during last week made it possible for me to have a look at comet Lovejoy, though. This is a relatively bright comet, easily seen through binoculars. It's bright enough to be seen with the naked eye as a faint, fuzzy star, but not in the light-polluted Metro area.

The days are getting longer; we're looking forward to more sun.