Tomato progress

Jul23
by catz on July 23, 2018 at 08:35
Posted In: gardening, Heirloom & Heritage Tomatos


This is part of our heirloom tomato patch. Each plant is staked, velcroed for support and labelled with a laminated nametag. We top up our soil each year and this year’s was just a little weed infested. The foreground is the result of an hours worth of weeding, the background is the total ground cover of weed. Ick! So far so good, no tomato hornworms at all. The drought has been bad. The 2nd image shows the last month of rainfall at our weather station. 10mm for July and maybe 25 for the last 30 days, with two to three weeks of heat wave temperatures. Surprisingly the tomatos are doing not too bad. They are being watered every other day in the early morning or late evening. The ground is totally dry the next day. There are some flowers coming up, some pollinators in the area, so we hope for a slightly subpar normal harvest this year.

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garlic harvest 2018

Jul23
by catz on July 23, 2018 at 08:27
Posted In: garlic, life the universe and everything

Sunday 2018 July 22nd, the 2nd day of garlic harvest. Saturday was about 3 hours of harvesting just under 200 plants. Sunday was only about 1 hour for just under 100 plants.
They were hand brushed off to get the very hard dirt out of the root and bulb surface, then rinsed in water and finally tagged with a cargo tag with their type and number and hung up to dry in a shaded open air leanto for 2-4 weeks.
We plant a minimum of 6 cloves of each type with 12, 18 or even 60 of types we like. Their were over 80 types this year and we hope to be finished the harvest in another 6 days or so. A new feature, as yet untested is a washing station table, basically a 2’x4′ box with hardware metal mesh over the surface on a stand 36″ off the ground. We will try this out the next harvest session.

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Bright meteor 20180629 01:24:58 EDT

Jul05
by catz on July 5, 2018 at 08:05
Posted In: astronomy

Reviewing the nightly allsky2 images of bright meteors, we came across this *nice* meteor at 05:24 UTC or 01:24 EDT.

Needless to say, we were not awake to see this but perhaps some of you were.

This was about a 3 second event from overhead (north is up) moving east to west

The two bright objects near the eastern end may be Jupiter on the bottom and Arcturus on the top.

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power rankings

Jul04
by catz on July 4, 2018 at 08:48
Posted In: life the universe and everything

Interesting analysis summary. Unsure of the detailed parameters but it looks pretty in the end.

The only good news is: being at the bottom means you can only go up 🙂
Wow.
How many weeks on the bottom before we get a better coach?
How many weeks on the bottom before we try to get some of our better players back.. oh wait.. many have now retired out of frustration.

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seti@home

Jun21
by catz on June 21, 2018 at 10:08 and modified on June 21, 2018. at 10:12
Posted In: astronomy, life the universe and everything, tech


I first joined the distributed computer project SETI@Home back on 1999 April 12th. That means early next year will be 20 years. Wow. Very few things survey for 20 years on the Internet.
Kim as well joined up in 1999, on August 13th.
We will have to celebrate in some fashion, involving the movies “Paul” and “Alien” and “Contact”.

It is the first day of summer, and as much as we have liked to install a small scale Stonehenge in the backyard, there are just a few too many trees in the way to get any chance of the sunlight making its way over the horizon onto our stones to work.


We have completed the weeding and grass pulling of all but three flower beds here at SCGO, and hope to have them done this weekend. It is always a race between weeding and running out of energy and motivation and letting the grass and weeds take over the flower beds.

There are a few summer projects left as well… renovating the leanto, adding some insulation to the greenhouse for those first few weeks early next spring, and building a new imaging observatory away from all of the tall trees that seem to have overtaken most of the sky at the existing site. Speaking of which, the new roof has survived some pretty strong storms already since it was completed back in May. Some Good News!

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Radiojove vs lightning

Jun14
by catz on June 14, 2018 at 10:29 and modified on June 14, 2018. at 10:29
Posted In: astronomy, weather

This is the affect of the thunderstorm/lightning storm that rolled through our area last night… less than an hour overhead directly, but the Radiojove radio telescope system was picking up strikes for 2 hours or so.

16:00-16:30 EDT


Before the storm

18:00-18:30 EDT


During the storm

19:00-19:30 EDT


After the storm

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Supersid anomaly

Jun11
by catz on June 11, 2018 at 14:40 and modified on June 11, 2018. at 14:54
Posted In: astronomy


This is a screen capture of the Supersid v1.2.2 software capturing the Supersid receiver data. We’ve started to notice that overtime the plotted graph shrinks down to almost no signal. Going back to the raw data displayed on the capture software we see this: signals moving into the negative range.
A simple software shutdown restart fixes it, as shown here:

The data looks pretty much identical but the Y axis has corrected.
One issue with restarting the software is that you basically lose the data for the day, as it only saves out every 24 hours. So we’ve lost the current day and will also lose the rest of today.

Actively looking for software updates (but can’t find any), or perhaps start thinking about rebooting the system every x days, just after 00:00 UT.
The antenna is a wirewound 24turn 2m diameter loop with the plan of the antenna NorthSouth, aimed at NAA in Maine, almost directly East. This was operational in 2016 January, replacing an older SID system.

The source code is not available to us and the data that we get out is a text .csv file that looks like this:
# Site = SCGO
# Contact =
# Country = CA
# Longitude = -76
# Latitude = 44
#
# UTC_Offset = -00.00
# TimeZone = EST
#
# UTC_StartTime = 2018-06-10 00:00:00
# LogInterval = 5
# LogType = filtered
# MonitorID =
# SampleRate = 5
# StationID = NAA
# Frequency = 24000
2018-06-10 00:00:00, 1.01886472755
2018-06-10 00:00:05, 1.01257096078
2018-06-10 00:00:10, 1.00627719401
2018-06-10 00:00:15, 0.999983427235
2018-06-10 00:00:20, 0.993689660464
2018-06-10 00:00:25, 0.987395893692

I think it would help to also create a page of the last weeks worth of images, for a quicker at-a-glance how is it going?
SCGO_NAA-20180610.png
SCGO_NAA-20180609.png
SCGO_NAA-20180608.png
SCGO_NAA-20180607.png
SCGO_NAA-20180606.png
SCGO_NAA-20180605.png
SCGO_NAA-20180604.png

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ISS transit of the Sun 2018June02

Jun04
by catz on June 4, 2018 at 10:15
Posted In: astronomy

On Saturday 2018 June 2nd, we drove over to the Venus transit site south of Newburgh (staying on the public road part and not trespassing) to observe and image the transit of the Sun by the International Space Station. Neither of us have witnessed this event before and it is on both of our observing bucket lists.

She was using her regular Solar scope, a Bausch & Lomb 4000 SC, fl=1200mm and an eyepiece, and a thousand oaks glass solar filter.

I was using the Meade LXD55 mount, Meade DS90 refractor (fl=800mm), the ZWO ASI120MC camera with a 0.5 focal reducer, a windows 10 laptop with firecapture2.6.0.8 , and a baader film solar filter.

The event was set for 20:03:52 from transit-finder.com. We arrived about 15 minutes early, turned on cell data and the atomic clock app to get hopefully sync’d time and started to setup. Last time I used my setup was last August in Wyoming… and I was short a critical part to mount the solar filter.

Kim found some scotch tape and we quickly attached the filter and crossed some finger that it would stay put.

The venus transit site has the only good NW horizon that we know of. The Yarker baseball diamond has a good SE horizon but with some local trees often in the way (had to climb on top of the minivan last time to get a clear shot).

I started the video .avi recording approx 30 seconds before the event.. good thing too as the event seemed to occur 3-5 seconds before prediction. could have been the cell phone time as well.. we forgot to bring the *real* shortware atomic clock.

The other issue with imaging… even with 800mm and a 0.5x focal reducer, the entire disk of the sun did not fit into the Field of View. There was a sunspot, 2712 on the disk, so I focussed on that. The ISS track had been shifting southward over the last few weeks and to get a centreline pass we would have been close to Napanee.. but with no good horizon.

So.. it would be a shorter chord pass but where on the sun? I took a guess and guessed wrong. It did get imaged at multiple FPS but on the top edge of the screen. I think we might have missed 1st contact and 2nd contact but have the middle bits.

The event was *fast*. 3 seconds still.. as it was far away and the apparent motion is fairly slow, compared to an overhead pass.

The video captured was 1280×960 pixels (full resolution) and the 22 seconds captured came in at 1400MB. I used the software AVI-trimmer to cut out the first and last segments and it came in at 400MB for about 6 seconds. The exposure was around 0.3ms /frame.

Then Handbrake to downsize and compress it into just under 2MB.

I want to break out each individual frame next and put them back together in various ways, perhaps blown up a bit as well.

So.. the first video produced is 1.8Mb large, is 1052×720 resolution at 18 FPS and is 7 seconds long or 126 frames.

It can be seen at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/125182848@N03/27689952367/

for now and on starlightcascade.ca a little later.

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Napanee Community Food Bank Garden over the years

May30
by catz on May 30, 2018 at 13:59 and modified on May 30, 2018. at 14:06
Posted In: gardening

Google Earth has a nice feature of making accessible historical satellite imagery. Below are the various images from the last few years of the Napanee Community Food Bank Garden.


2011 July 08

2012 Sep 19

2015 Mar 27

2016 Jun 02

2016 Late Fall?

2017

There will be another new photo sometime showing the location has moved again, as noted in the previous blog post.

We actually have dimensions from the 2018 variant, and once a new satellite image is posted we can go back and determine the dimensions of past gardens, which we did not think to measure at the time.

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Tomatos 2018 May

May30
by catz on May 30, 2018 at 07:43 and modified on May 30, 2018. at 07:44
Posted In: gardening, Heirloom & Heritage Tomatos

The tomatos have come out of the greenhouse and have been hardening off outside for the last three days. So far so good, no losses.
This is the approximate list, ie those that were planted in the greenhouse. Some did not germinate, others did not survive. They have been transplanted once into larger individual pots (seen above) and will be put into the ground in the next few days. At that time we will correct the list where needed:
1 Tomato Alacrity
2 Tomato Amish Paste
3 Tomato Asleigh
4 Tomato Aunt Molly’s Ground Cherry
5 Tomato Azoychka
6 Tomato Bear Claw
7 Tomato Black Plum
8 Tomato Blush
9 Tomato Bonny Best
10 Tomato Brandywine
11 Tomato Brandywine Lanis Valley Strain
12 Tomato Brandywine Sudduths Strain
13 Tomato Bull’s Heart
14 Tomato Burbank 1915
15 Tomato Campbell Paste
16 Tomato Cosmonaut Volkov
17 Tomato Dandy
18 Tomato Earl of Edgecombe
19 tomato Earliana
20 Tomato Eros aka Red Eros
21 Tomato Ferris Wheel
22 Tomato Fireball
23 Tomato Green Grape
24 Tomato Hotset
25 Tomato Kellogg’s Breakfast
26 Tomato Lemon Drop
27 Tomato Lime Green Salad
28 Tomato Livingston Stone
29 Tomato Martino’s Roma
30 Tomato Mr Griffiths florida cherry
31 Tomato Napoli Paste
32 Tomato Pink Bumble
33 Tomato Red Pear 1861
34 Tomato Scarlet Beefsteak
35 Tomato Scotia
36 Tomato Sunrise Bumblebee
37 Tomato Yellow Pear

There are at least 3 of each, for approx 110 plants.

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SCGO Potatos in

May29
by catz on May 29, 2018 at 08:29 and modified on May 31, 2018. at 13:52
Posted In: gardening


On Friday 2018 May 25th, the SCGO Potato crop was finished planting. In addition to a few earlier types planets in VegBed6, the majority were put in VegBed4.
The black flies were out again and we had to wear bug jackets. This is week 4 or 5 of black flies.

Each row had 6 hills and were of one type of potato. The rows are running North-South.
From East to West the potatos are:
Blue Victor
Irish Cobbler
Kennebec
Morning Glory
Green Mountain
Norland
Yukon Gold
Yukon Gold again
Warba
White Rose
10 rows, 9 types, 60 hills in this area.

Updated: 2018 May 30
Potatos were planted a few days earlier in VegBed#6:
Warba
Brigus
Morning Glory
Blushing Belle
French Fingerling
5 types, 15 hills

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Napanee Community Food Bank Garden 2018

May29
by catz on May 29, 2018 at 08:17 and modified on May 29, 2018. at 08:18
Posted In: gardening


Another year and another location for the Napanee Community Food Bank Garden. Yes.. they moved down the field from the previous few years location.
The new main bed is approx 45’x55′ or 2500 ft^2 (rounded).
They also have 15 new raised beds, 10 of which are operational this year. Each is approx 4’x8′ or 32 ft^2.
Ten of those gives 320 ft^2 with a grand total of 2500+320 or approx 2800 ft^2 of gardening space this year.

Planting was almost completed on Monday 2018 May 28th:
150 tomatoes, and about 100 green peppers – as well as about 100 cabbages.

Once Google Earth updates its imagery of this area, we can compare the known size currently and back calculate what size the past bed locations were. That will be rolled into the annual stats report that gets generated.

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