Thoughts from Starlight Cascade

Gardening and Astronomy Adventures outside Yarker Ontario Canada
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RadioJove functions!

Nov29
by kevin on November 29, 2022 at 12:34 and modified on November 29, 2022. at 12:36
Posted In: astronomy

After many weeks of issues with the RadioJove v1 system, we finally got it operational again a few days ago. Some of the recording levels seemed a little low but the audio recordings showed ionospheric probes and normal background noise. The Sun has been quiet of late so there were no flares to look at and compare.

But then we received a note from the RadioJove email list from a fellow Radiojove station in Florida. A double burst was recorded:
Sun Nov. 28, 2022 Millhopper Radio Obs. Gainesville, FL
The first peak was around 17:15:00 UTC and the second burst about 30 seconds later.
So we fired up the RadioSkypipe program, loaded in the days data and started stretching the resulting graph.
We got it!

There was a lot of noise either side of the signal but it is definitely there. This would have been overlooked in the normal review of the data at the graph scales that we use. This bottom graph is ours, SCGO RadioJove.

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asteroid 2022 WJ1 Fireball 2022nov19 082652UTC

Nov22
by kevin on November 22, 2022 at 11:15
Posted In: astronomy

As you may have heard, a newly discovered 1m asteroid crashed into the atmosphere mere hours after discovery.
The UWO Allskycamera network captured it and was able to provide a lot of information (see below). Of note, Camera #10 located in Yarker, also captured the event!

This is the composite image.
Below is the 6 second video (out of a 15 second event) that we captured, just barely over the horizon and through some trees in our SouthWest:

https://starlightcascade.ca/blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/ev_20221119_082652A_10A.mp4

From UWO:
As many of you will know from media reports, asteroid 2022 WJ1 fell right in the middle of the network over the weekend (0326 on Saturday night to be exact). We will be sending out a public call for people to keep an eye out for meteorites as we think some may be on shore near Grimsby (map attached).

https://news.westernu.ca/2022/11/niagara-meteor/

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Linux Fedora 36 to 37 upgrades inplace

Nov17
by kevin on November 17, 2022 at 09:34 and modified on November 17, 2022. at 09:35
Posted In: tech

Linux Fedora 37 was released earlier this week and already we have upgraded three systems. So far so good, no issues with the inplace upgrades.
The command line sequence as root goes like this:

dnf upgrade –refresh
reboot
dnf install dnf-plugin-system-upgrade
dnf system-upgrade download –releasever=37
dnf system-upgrade reboot
dnf system-upgrade clean
dnf clean packages
dnf upgrade
Fedora 37 upgrade complete!
Each took less than 30 minutes.

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2022 Seed Saving -Tomatoes

Nov15
by kim hay on November 15, 2022 at 11:58 and modified on November 15, 2022. at 11:58
Posted In: gardening, Heirloom & Heritage Tomatos, life the universe and everything

The seeds were all dried and put in their packets today. Nine types of tomato seeds were saved out this year.

Anna Russian (mid-large Red), Tiny Tim (red currant) , White Queen (mid White/yellow), Lemon Drop (Yellow cherry)  , Scotia (md red-sweet), Roma (Red- plum med), Large Polish (red- Large) , Pineapple (Large bi-coloured), Napoli Paste (Red mid ).

Issues with Tomatoes in general this year, needs more spacing. Need better and higher staking for the large varieties, such as Kelloggs Breakfast, Pineapple, Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, Southern Nights.

Tiny Tim, is a small bush size, so no staking required. Lemon Drop, needs staking and a tomato cage to hold the stems. Scotia was prolific this year, and so sweet. Higher staking required, as it was very heavy with fruit. All Paste tomatoes, need lots of staking , as they too get heavy.

Stake the plants early, and monitor every couple of days. There was early blight this year, and though the leaves were taken off, the late blight came after the rains in August, and the plants went quickly. All debris was burned.

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Napanee Community Garden 2022

Nov14
by kevin on November 14, 2022 at 11:31 and modified on November 14, 2022. at 11:32
Posted In: napanee food bank garden


This was the 13th year of the Napanee Community Garden for the Local Food Bank.
This is a small group of volunteers who plan, prepare, plant, weed, water, and harvest fresh local produce for the Food Bank in Napanee.
Back when we were younger, we participated in the handson portions of this, but as years went on, we could no longer. Now we tabulate the annual harvest and produce this report: .2022foodbankgarden-AnnualHarvestSummary
A Big Thanks to Susan Withers for the data logging!
A big thanks to all of the volunteers for 2022!

In addition some images from the garden post harvest:


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Jupiter 2022Nov02

Nov04
by kevin on November 4, 2022 at 09:37 and modified on November 4, 2022. at 09:41
Posted In: astronomy

Awesome! A Double Shadow Transit of Jupiter’s moons Wednesday evening.
Below is an animated GIF of approx 45 runs of 180 seconds each, with no delay between each.
Each was approx 30K frames and the best 5% of those were used.

The first frame shows the shadow of the Moon Europa moving from left to right in the southern hemisphere. Europa is the first moon to emerge from the face of Jupiter. Ganymede is the 2nd moon to emerge from the face of Jupiter and it’s shadow appears on the lower left of Jupiter a little later.
The moon Io is seen moving from right to left on the left side of Jupiter.

Five great objects of interest in one evening!
Europa
Europa’s shadow
Ganymede
Ganymede’s Shadow
Io
Jupiter is a little overprocessed, especially some of the darker clouds in the North Equatorial Belt (no, not moon shadows)

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Jupiter 2022nov01

Nov02
by kevin on November 2, 2022 at 16:57 and modified on November 2, 2022. at 16:59
Posted In: astronomy

An awesome evening yesterday… If I had only know there would be moon shadows I would have stayed out!
These are two still images showing the moon Io moving left to right just about to transit Jupiter. The second shows it over the surface of Jupiter.
If I had waited another hour or two I could have capture Ios shadow moving across the surface as well!

The last run of the evening. The Great Red Spot is showing up nicely.
These are the best 5% of approx 30K frames taken at 1ms exposures for 180 seconds.


But then we also have the combination of all of the runs that evening:
This is an animated GIF image

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More collimation video

Nov02
by kevin on November 2, 2022 at 16:54 and modified on November 2, 2022. at 16:54
Posted In: astronomy

Still trying to understand the collimation status of the Vixen VC200L telescope.
This is a 30 second video of being outside of the focus point

https://starlightcascade.ca/blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/vixenoutsidefocus-2022-11-01-2325-4-Kk-L-Star-Exposure98.2Ms-Zwo-Asi290mc.m4v

Air currents can be seen but in general the image is pretty symmetrical.
Maybe my imagination shows a little offset.

https://starlightcascade.ca/blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/vixenoutsidetofocus-2022-11-01-2326-2-Kk-L-Star-Exposure98.2Ms-Zwo-Asi290mc.m4v

This video is moving from outside of focus to focus itself.

https://starlightcascade.ca/blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/vixenfocus2022-11-01-2326-7-Kk-L-Star-Exposure60.0Ms-Zwo-Asi290mc.m4v

This is at focus with gain and exposure turned down from the outside of focus.

https://starlightcascade.ca/blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/vixeninsidefocus-2022-11-01-2327-6-Kk-L-Star-Exposure65.0Ms-Zwo-Asi290mc.m4v

and lastly this is the inside of focus view.

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Garlic issues coming into Ontario

Nov01
by kim hay on November 1, 2022 at 09:57
Posted In: garlic

Anthracnose of garlic scapes reported for first time in Ontario, this was a story from FarmOntario

We do not have this issue at the Gardens, but it is something to keep an eye on.

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Got collimation?

Oct30
by kevin on October 30, 2022 at 11:27 and modified on October 30, 2022. at 11:35
Posted In: astronomy

Over the last few months we do not seem to be getting the performance out of our 20cm Vixen telescope. Everything has been cleaned, the 90 degree diagonal has been removed, the x2 Antares barlow has been removed.
Planetary imaging remains soft, fuzzy and low resolution.
So after all of that one of the few possibilities left is that of collimated optics.
Here are some samples of going in and out of focus to see if the patterns are symmetrical or not.
These have been compressed down from the original 200-800MB files using handbrake, downgrading resolution to 480p.
The star is Altair, a magnitude 0.75 star approx 31 degrees above the horizon.
I hope to try again on a 2nd magnitude star, as recommended.

https://starlightcascade.ca/blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/2022-10-30-0200-1-Kk-L-Star-Exposure49.8Ms-Zwo-Asi290mc.m4v
https://starlightcascade.ca/blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/2022-10-30-0201-8-Kk-L-Star-Exposure49.8Ms-Zwo-Asi290mc.m4v
https://starlightcascade.ca/blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/2022-10-30-0156-9-Kk-L-Star-Exposure4.5Ms-Zwo-Asi290mc.m4v
https://starlightcascade.ca/blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/2022-10-30-0159-0-Kk-L-Star-Exposure49.8Ms-Zwo-Asi290mc.m4v
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Garlic Planting 2022

Oct24
by kevin on October 24, 2022 at 08:22 and modified on October 24, 2022. at 09:20
Posted In: gardening, garlic


And it is DONE! The SCGO Garlic Planting of 2022. It went quicker and easier than past years, thanks to a lot of prep work up front. cracking the bulbs ahead of time, each in its own labelled paper bags with name and number of cloves. All of the signage prepped, counted and sorted. And then the fantastic weather of 20C with a nice breeze.
In past years we have planted at night, with floodlights with rain, sleet and snow coming down. No More!
We planted on Saturday morning Oct 22 and on Sunday afternoon Oct 23.

So, we used the 8 hole Dibbler Mark II, 8 spikes in the dibbler, each 1 3/8″ diameter and 7″ long with 5″ spacing between spikes. Two extending bars measured distance between rows, we used 6″ between rows.
We used two poles to hold onto it whilst jumping on each end and in the middle to get ground penetration.

Unfortunately the dibbler outpaces our human capabilities. We typically move backwards down the bed with feet spread across the 40″ so as to not compact the soil. So of us cannot straddle 40″ anymore 🙂 As well, with 8, larger spikes rather than the Dibbler Mark I, 6 smaller diameter spikes, the absolute PSI driving into the ground is much less. Even jumping up and down on the dibbler into damp soil, it rarely achieve the 7″ depth. We aim for the clove to be 4-5 ” below grade and with the shape of the spike, incomplete depth, this works out for us.

So next year we are planning to move to a narrowed Mark III dibbler, either back to the original 6 hole model or an intermediate 7 hole model. Same force on top with fewer spikes means more PSI per spike, hopefully going deeper than this one did this year.

We planted in VegBed5’s eastern end going from north to south. The signage is laminated laser printed names staples to 1×2″x1′ stakes. This naming system has shown to stand up to time the best of all others. The print is facing north, to avoid sunlight.

The first sub-bed had 38 rows, then 40, 43, 38 and 16, totalling 175 rows * 8 cloves per row = 1400 cloves!
It took just over an hour for each sub-bed and in total about 5-6 hours planting

One last task is to cover them with straw to protect them from direct sunlight and the freeze/thaw cycles that happen over winter. Once frozen they should stay frozen until spring.

The number of varieties planted this year: 18+21+17+18+4=78
We cut down on the number of types this year, as many of the smaller yields just did not make the cut. We expanded the number of planted cloves in those varieties that did particularly well, like Fishlake and Hungarian.

The planting method:

1) we planted stakes at the beginning and end of the subbed, a measured distance away from the fence to allow for a walking path. A string was tied to give a line to work on.

2) the subbed was raked over to get as flat of a surface as possible.

3) The first dibber went in up against the beginning stake. Each subsequent dibble lined up with the string and used the two extension bars to mark 6″ from the last set of holes.

4) Name stakes went in on the opposite side of the string. Each row got its own namestake. As this was going on, Kim would get the next bag, check the name against the stake and start planting about 4-5″ down, or as deep as we could get. Because the 40″ wide row was too wide and we did not want to go around from one side to the other, we would plant two twos and then rake them over to fill in the holes, and then step forward onto the space to plant the next rows, etc. etc.

5) Once the subbed was done, the string came off and two more beginning and end stakes were measured and driven in for the next subbed.
Later today the straw will go on top of the garlic, protecting it against extremes of light and temperature.

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Today’s Gardening Adventures

Oct21
by kim hay on October 21, 2022 at 15:54 and modified on October 21, 2022. at 15:54
Posted In: gardening

The day started out cold -2C but the sun was shining. The wind coming from the SSW at 11 km/h and gusty. I quickly got out to do some Solar Astronomy, then proceeded to get into the gardening mode.

The Bulbils needed to be done, but I decided that they will not be planted in 2022. We have the garlic that will be planted on Oct 22/23 and any types that were too small, went into the  styrofoam cup to be planted in the Bulbil bed (Garden 7), I just cannot get rid of them, they want to grow. Most are Mediterranian types that may not like the cold weather we have in Canada. So they are in a raised bed, in a cup, and already covered with straw.

Types that are planted- all small bulbs (broken into the individual cloves):

Chesnock Red 6

Persian Star 5

Phillapino 6

Acropolis Greek 4

Spanish Roja 6

Anglio Rosso 9

Chiliean Silver 7

Carpathian 3

Barcelona Red  SP 8

Metchi 3

Tibetan 7

Bubba’s Chsnock 5

So 73 cloves planted.

We have been growning the bulbils out of various varieties for over 10 years, and the main purpose was too see how long it took one small bulbil to produce a bulb. It ranged from 3-5 years, depending on the type. What  we had, will be eaten and enjoyed.

This project was started by the wise words of Garlic Guru Paul Pospisil from Beaver Ponds Estates. Paul is no longer with us, but his wisdom carries on.

I also heard crickets, saw dandelions, white phlox, salad burnet, catmint  and german chamomile still growing, the flowers do not want to stop either.

Expecting warmer temperatures for the next few days, so its Garlic weekend

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