mud and sun (Blue Mountains)

Woke mid-morning as others started getting active up in the kitchen. Still groggy after my shower, I was informed of my new name: Snorémon. My Pokémon power is snore!

Grace and I admired the morning Moon. She wondered aloud what it would look like in a telescope. Awesome, I said.

Only got about 2 cups of java in me when plans emerged to ride the Loree Forest trail.



Of course, I had other duties to perform...

Trevor, Tony, Phil, and myself enjoyed a short bike ride on mixed packed soil with very scenic views. It wasn't trivial the ride. I laid the new bike down climbing the limestone cliff at beginning. Phil had a diverging fall shortly after. I got the bike good and muddy by the end! On the way back to the CAO, on SR21 westbound, on the steep paved hill, I hit 59.7 km/h! Damn. Probably could have broken 60 with a little more umph.

While resting and recharging, we did a wee bit of solar observing. Today we used the Paramount, C14, TV101, and TheSky6. I installed the baader film full spectrum filter on the SCT and the Hydrogen-alpha SolarMax system on the refractor. Phil helped me tune the Athlon.

In white light we saw the huge sunspot from yesterday. The umbra was oval shaped, surrounded by a light grey penumbra region. Kiron thought it looked like two spots touching. In Hα, the sunspot was surrounded by massive mottled form, churned, clearly a very active region, about 8 or 9 times the diameter of the umbra itself. We could also see large foreground loops in the foreground and a couple of small prominences along the limb. It was very impressive.

We tried to gauge the size of the sunspot. We all thought it about the size of the Earth. Tony was trying to remember the size of this third rock in relation to the Sun. And Jupiter. None of us could remember the numbers.

(Crunched the numbers in a spreadsheet: 10 and 100. Approximately. Just under 10 Earths could fit across Jupiter. Just over 100 Earths would fit across the Sun.)

I did some quick meal planning before doing a food run with Kiron in Collingwood.

Did some chores too. Cut 2 more spare keys for the new GBO door. Bought some TP and CLR. Picked up a spade bit for a repair Tony had lined up. Bumped into a regional racer, coveting the E30 M3, in the Canadian Tire parking lot.

Jon arrived for a brief visit. Katrina and Fred arrived in the company car. Fred was interested in a canoe for sale nearby; Katrina was anxious to use her collapsible Dob.

Reviewing Heavens Above, I programmed the International Space Station flyovers for the evening into my palmtop. There would be 3 this evening, the first two being very long.

I noted no work emails. Whew!

Kiron bought a piece of red film from me. He covered his laptop screen and all the banks of blue LEDs! Glad I brought the roll.

Jon brought the Toronto Villager newspaper with store catalogs. Phil and I devoured the CTC flyer for specials!

Helped Kiron align the finder scope in the society's loaner 8" Dob. Also showed him how to focus the finder scope.

It was looking like a good night, although there was some high wispy cloud...