Friday, May 20, 2022

AIR day 12

The following is a blog post from the Astronomer-In-Residence (AIR) web site, reproduced here. Text and images used with permission.

Day 12 blog entry.

Friday 20 May 2022: Quiet Day Then Thunder Boomers

Holy smokes, it's Friday already! (And the beginning of The Big Weekend.)

Realised I should add a slide at the end of my Tour of the Night slide presentation about the RASC Explore the Universe program. It’s open to the public. Anyone can do it! Tomorrow evening I will delivery this presentation.

Had a proper Blake's Breakfast Sandwich with peameal bacon! Yum.

Chatted with my sis. She asked if I've seen any porcupines! Gosh, no. I told her about the bats and the moths. She loves bats.

The rain's picked up. It's a good day for a duck. Checked the Clear Sky Chart for Killarney. Oh dear.

Considered how to stack my supernova images. I checked the Dell laptop for Deep Sky Stacker. I used that before so was ready to try it. Bruce recommended Sequator. I’ve also used it but only once or twice. OK. The good news? Sequator accepts CR2 files directly! The spiral arms in NGC 4647 were visible. That was impressive with such short subs, and no flats, and no darks!

Tested the batteries in the various finders. Put red film on some of the extremely bright LEDs in the Kchi observatory.

It turned fair, stopped raining. I entertained the idea of getting on the bicycle, finally. But then I had to head into a meeting. Elaina and I caught up.

Dinner time: Mexican night! Ola!

Updated images recently captured and began uploading them.

At 6:55 PM, I heard thunder. The lights flickered in a brief brown out. Three minutes later? They stayed out. And I heard a gennie fire up...

Oh. I missed the weather alert, the severe thunderstorm watch, from earlier in the day.

"Conditions are favourable for the development of severe thunderstorms that may be capable of producing strong wind gusts and large hail... A tornado or two is possible." That can be a little unnerving when you're in a tent.

I read a few more pages in my book. Played a phone game but then put it to sleep to save power. Put my laptop into Hibernate mode. Then lay down on the couch…

Flickering lights, clicking, beeping pulled me out of my slumber at 9:20 PM.

Kinda time to wind down anyway…

P. S. Heard from Trevor. He’s been camping and then busy at work. He asked me if I had seen any bears. As a matter of fact…

The Astronomer-In-Residence program is coordinated by the Allan I Carswell Observatory (AICO) at York University with the Killarney Provincial Park Observatory (KPPO).

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