Archive for November, 2009

8 results.

2012 – leave your brain at home

Nov28
by kevin on November 28, 2009 at 13:25 and modified on November 28, 2009. at 13:29
Posted In: Science Fiction

went to see the movie 2012 thursday evening, knowing in advance that it was not going to be the most accurate movie in the world… and it wasn’t. Boy was it ever wasn’t!
One of my favourite cliparts illustrates this very well:thestupiditburns

But I had to just to go and see it, if not for anything else than the special effects… And for the most part they were fun! california sliding into the ocean for instance… lotsa Fun! Very little if no explanation as to the whole premise and any linkage into the mayan calendar.. probably for the best!

Then we fired up Star Trek (2009) .. that was a mistake … more bad writing amongst an otherwise fun movie. Fire all the weapons at the bad guy ship as it is being sucked into a black hole/singularity and then decide to back away … too late! Beaming onto a moving starship at Warp? Come on! And what’s with all of the moving water around and around and all those 90 degrees turns… and turbines? Geeze… as bad/funny as Tim Allen in Galaxy Quest and the mashing teeth tunnel.

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Escape!

Nov26
by kevin on November 26, 2009 at 08:40
Posted In: gardening

worm
Some of our vermiculture worms that live in a bin down in the basement escaped the other day… they climbed on top of the shredded newspaper and leapt across the intervening centimeters to reach the rim and over the wall they went!

The next morning the escape was discovered and many were sent back to the box. The cats seemed to totally ignore them.
One worm made it as far as the carpeting.

Turns out they come out at night in the dark, to the surface… looking for a party? In this dim time of year, it is actually dark down there quite a lot. We’ve been forced to turn on a 10w CF bulb over the bin to keep them down inside and underground.

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Day 3 Leonids

Nov18
by kevin on November 18, 2009 at 08:55 and modified on December 8, 2009. at 20:26
Posted In: astronomy

Amazingly enough, this is the 3rd straight day of getting up early early early to observe the Leonid Meteor Shower. The peak was supposed to be yesterday (Tuesday Nov 17) around 17:00 EST. We observed Tuesday morning approx 9 to 10 hours before peak and it was pretty slow (maybe 6 meteors?)
This morning was about 11 hours post peak and it was much busier… maybe 12+ for Kim and a good 6+ for me.

The fun part was coming in for coffee and watching the latest episode of the Big Bang Theory featuring the guys going out to the desert to watch the Leonid Meteor Shower!
20091118-02-sirius-orion-hyades

20091118-10-hyades-pleiades

20091118-11-kingstonlightdome
These are all 64sec exposures using our canon powershot A540 camera
on a tripod, unguided.

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More Leonids

Nov17
by kevin on November 17, 2009 at 05:56
Posted In: astronomy

Out again early Tuesday morning at 04:00 EST (09:00 UT) to look for Leonids. The skies were pristine but the air was cold.. about -5C.
stayed out for about 30 minutes, taking pictures until the camera batteries died out. The nickel metal hybrids are a lower voltage to start, about 2.62v when fully charged, as opposed to 3.15 for alkalines. Plus being out in the cold, they tend not to last as long as normal. Time to start thinking about building an external power pack for the camera for those long winters ahead.

In any event, Kim was out for over an hour and observed many more than 3 Leonids… counts to follow. I spotted about 3 in the course of 30 minutes. Again, no images on the camera but there should be some on the Allsky camera images, to be reviewed later today.

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KAON Public Observing

Nov16
by kevin on November 16, 2009 at 12:33 and modified on November 16, 2009. at 12:35
Posted In: astronomy

Title: KAON Public Observing
Location: Queens Ellis Hall Observatory
Start Time: 7:30pm
Date: 2009-12-12

We will be holding our International Year of Astronomy wrap up this evening, rain snow or shine!

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Leonids?

Nov16
by kevin on November 16, 2009 at 12:25 and modified on November 16, 2009. at 13:00
Posted In: astronomy

The leonid meteor shower peak is approaching quickly. We went out this morning and took a few images along the way. After about 30 minutes outside before dawn, we saw two and only two Leonid meteors but no images of them.

Here is a 64 second f2.6 exposure of Leo, Mars and M44 the Beehive Cluster. Leo, Mars, M44

And here is another of Orion and Sirius
Sirius & Orion
The main peak(s) are expected to occur in the hours around 22h00 UT on November 17= 17h00 US Eastern, although variable activity may happen at almost any stage between November 16 and 18.

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Site upgrade

Nov16
by kevin on November 16, 2009 at 12:16
Posted In: Uncategorized

WordPress was upgraded again this morning and we also moved it to the forefront of the site, moving many of the pages of interest to the “quicklinks” section in the right hand column.

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double rainbow

Nov03
by kevin on November 3, 2009 at 09:04
Posted In: weather

20091013-03
One cloudy rainy day in October the sun peaked out just enough to throw up this gorgeous double rainbow over the house on some dark clouds.
Photography does not do it justice to be sure, and I don’t think you can make out the 2nd dimmer one at all in the image.

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