Garlic sizer
For those looking for garlic seed to plant this fall, rest assured we will have some in the near future.
Last week the cleaning and storing of the 500 bulbs was completed.
Next week will be the choosing of seed for our own planting. So by the end of the month we will have some of the remainder available.
The first step in Garden Prep is to get your (*&#^$@#% machinery working again! Our tiller has worked great for 2 or 3 years now… will tear through all kinds of weeds and grass and turn the soil over quite nicely.
It looks like at the end of last season we did not burn off/drain off the gas and it got the carb all kerfluffeled. Not being a small engine guy, I tried starting it .. a lot. Surprisingly that did not work. What did work was:
Day 10: drain all of the gas; pull the carburetor bowl; clean the gunk out of the bowl; spray everything I could reach with carb cleaner (Canadian Tire about $6); put the bowl back on and then refill with fresh premier high grade gas (not the other way around like I actually did). Remove and clean the air filter. Try starting it x20. Nothing.
Day 11: probably flooded the carb yesterday, try again today. on x10 pull it started… and continued to run. Yay! Since it was running, let’s take it on over to Vegbed #5 and till that over in prep for the garlic planting next month. It did very well, not stalling ever. It did get gummed up with weeds and grass a few times but otherwise 30 minutes later as much of the bed and been turned over as possible.
We still have some flowers, sunflowers and squash in the bed, that will be coming out soon, before garlic planting.
In addition, since this bed tends to be very damp and wet all of the time, being closest to the intermittent creek we have, we added a 25kg bag of sand spread over the bed. This is in the hopes of making it drain better in the future. We will probably add some more, along with a smaller amount of composted sheep manure than last year, and some of our own compost. It could use some more earth as well but that will not be coming until the spring, too late for this crop.
This is it. Totality. The complete eclipse of the Sun by the Moon.
It was a long trip from the Kingston Ontario area to Wyoming and a longer trip back.
It was absolutely worth it.
Words are hard to find to try to convey the experience to another. 100% awesome does not come close.
Surreal does not come close. Awe inspiring, slightly terrifying, wonder-ful, other dimensionality, does not come close.
Canon EOS Digital Rebel DS6041 (aka EOS 300D, 2003), 3072×2048 pixels (6.3 Mpixel), Canon 75-300mm lens at 300mm with polymer solar filter, ISO 800, 1/400 second, on a tripod with no processing.
over 500 garlic plants with over 75 types
We basically watch the weather forecasts two weeks out and look for a downturn.. or a heavy frost (-3C or colder) night, and try to plant a week or two before that. Enough time for the cloves to establish a few roots, and with them being down 4″ they will have more time before a sustained cold affects them.
We have been getting better at planting, moving from 7-8 hours with 300 cloves to maybe 6 hours with 500+ cloves.
Being organized helps and having the bed ready to go is also a critical.
The beds (rotated from last year) will be tilled, compost and composted sheep manure added, then tilled again, at least a month before planting… which is around now.
Other prep includes having the garlic seed chosen in advance, cracking the bulbs in advance and having at least 6 ready to go in a labelled bag and a labelled stick for the ground.
The 6 hole dibbler should be cleaned and ready to go as well.
This year we decided to put down covering straw over the entire bed, including walking paths, instead of just the bed.
This is the complete video that we have from the Total Solar Eclipse from south of Jay Em Wyoming on Monday 2017 August 21st. The camcorder does record a timestamp but only displays it upon playback from the camcorder… so the digital file itself did not contain onscreen timestamps. We made one edited video without timestamps and posted that earlier. This one was played back in realtime from the camcorder to a DVD recorder. The DVD was then digitized using Handbrake and turned into this 80MB file that runs for 2 hours 19 minutes 29 seconds, which is less than the total event. We had several instances of the camcorder turning itself off during the event. It ended up being 6 files of varying length that we had to put together as the first step. The camera time was set manually using an “atomic clock” as reference and should be within 1 second of realtime. The time measured for totality using this video and a stopwatch came in at 2 minutes 28seconds.
The recording was not metering correctly at the start, but about 8 minutes in we were able to do a spot meter on the sun itself, and that made the sunspots visible.
The camcorder was mounted to a Celestron GT mount that performed not too badly. Initially we pointed it at the sun (with a baader solar filter) and told it to sync to solar system object Moon. and it did not too badly. The shaking was caused by the high winds at the sight, just south of Jay Em Wyoming.
Latitude 42.416951 North
Longitude 104.356154 West
Time Zone: Mountain Daylight Time (UT-6)
This is the first processing run of the total solar eclipse video shot on Monday 2017 August 21 south of Jay Em Wyoming. We used Movie Maker that comes with Windows 10, and it was able to stitch together the six compress .m4v files created by Handbrake from the original .mpg large files. We added in some public domain background music and were able to speed up the partial eclipse phase x64 times, then move back to x1 normal speed for totality and back up to x64 for the post totality partial phase.
It did take some time to process on an Intel Core2 Duo @2.93GHz and 4GB RAM working on an SSD drive. On the order of an hour give or take.
The video is quite large (80MB) and does contain some gaps where we suffered equipment failure.
At mostly the last minute, we decided to drive to Wyoming to witness the 2017 August 21 Total Solar Eclipse. Why Wyoming? Mainly because the historical weather records showed us that this was the best bet for clear skies. We had also been through the area in 2009 and were somewhat familiar with it, and there were destinations we wanted to see again. So we made the plans and on Friday August 18th morning 6am, we headed out.
The intent was to find a campground somewhere west of Chicago, but circumstances beyond our control, namely +60 minutes on the 401 highway trying to get through the city of Toronto, and worse yet, 1 hour 45 minutes from encountering the end of the line at the Bluewater bridge in Sarnia, to getting through US customs. Arrg!
We ended up in the city of Peru, Illinois, much later than hoped and packed it in after 12 hrs 18 min + another 2 hr 45 min or 15 hours on the road and 1225km (765 miles).
Day Two, or Saturday as the locals called it, had us travelling west as far as possible and find a campsite before sunset for ease of setup. We did approx 10 hours that day and 1120km (700 miles). Clear day with high temperatures in the low 30sC. We ended up in a small campsite that could have used a little more work. The tenting area was near the only creek in the area and we were inundated with mosquitos. Double Ugg.
Day Three (Sunday) was intended to be a short day so we could stop at Wall, South Dakota and get some souvenirs… which we did! Then a leisurely drive up to our destination, the KOA campsite at Devils Tower Wyoming. We arrived relatively early after only a 4 hours drive 450km (283 miles). It was a great campsite with a great view (more of that later). Mostly it was to rest and prep for the next day, Eclipse day. We had filled up with gas near the end of the day, as we were preparing against pumps being empty in the Eclipse Zone. We checked the next day weather forecasts and things were on track for a three hour run due south to the centerline. Another 30C day with temperatures that night plunging to near 12C.
Day Four, Eclipse Day! (Monday)
We were up bright and early, just after 04:00 local (Mountain Daylight Time) or UT-6 and headed out shortly afterward. We stopped and topped off again with coffee and gas in Newcastle and continued southward to light traffic. Passing through Lusk and then Jay-Em a distance, suddenly there were cars everywhere parked in ditches, well off the highway and shoulders. We picked a spot just north of the 2nd Rawhide Creek Bridge, not knowing exactly how far away the centerline was or where exactly we were. But the thought was with so many people, there may not have been space further ahead.
We set up to perfect weather and amidst a lot of technical issues with mounts and cameras and power, the eclipse came and went and was 100% awesome. The trip back was not nearly so smooth. While 90%+ of the people left after totality, we stayed until the end of the event, another 90+ minutes later. We packed up and headed north and ran into a traffic jam approx 3km south of Lusk and it stayed stop and go for over an hour before we finally got into town. Stopped off for a bite to eat and ran into Jennifer from Toronto coming out of the Subway shop! Amazing!
Afterward we kept going north and ran into yet another huge traffic jam a few km south of the turnoff to Rapid City. That one was MVC that slowed us down. We managed to get back to camp much later than expected but still early evening, where we were able to partake in their nightly screening of Close Encounters of the Third Kind! Amazing!
It did get cold so we packed it in. Too tired to do any astroimaging. Another 12C night.
Day Five (Tuesday) was meant to be an easy day, about 5 hours of driving with stops in Deadwood, Wall and then a slow tour through the Badlands to our campsite inside the Badlands. Deadwood was fun. We have only seen Season1 of the TV series and are looking forward to the remainder as soon as possible!
We stopped in Wall again for supplies and then headed into the Badlands, going the opposite direction this time from the 2009 trip. Awesome terrain and scenery. Highly recommended! The campsite was basically in the desert and we had a Park Ranger, Ranger Ed, give a great talk on the background of the park, and a guy from the Tucson Astronomy Club with a C11 showing us Jupiter. Kim managed to look out the tent window all night at the stars. Very hot and dry, over 33C. Not so cold in the night, maybe 15C.
Day Six (Wednesday) was a big travelling day, albeit not backtracking the same route we took on the way out. We had hoped to make it further east than we did, but then there was that pesky time zone change and we lost an hour of time and sunlight. So we managed 9 hours of driving to get into West Salem Wisconsin just as the sun was setting, 923km (577 miles).
Day Seven (Thursday) we had hoped to make it all the way home, but another pesky time zone change left us well short and after 6 days of driving, we were getting cranky. Rain had started to fall in bits and pieces as well. Getting through or around Chicago again was even worse then last time. Maybe an extra 1.5 hours to get by. The border and bridge crossing went well, maybe 10 minutes in total. We ended up near London Ontario just before sunset and decided to call it a day.
11 hours and 1165 km (727 miles) later.
Day Eight (Friday) saw us encounter horrible 401 traffic through and before and after Toronto and the 5 hour estimate turned into 6-7 hours before we pulled into the driveway 415km (260 miles) later.
Total trip was over 6100km in 200 hours
Was it worth it? Totally!
Here is a better map of the eclipse zone showing the relative positions of Wyoming, South Dakota and Nebraska. We were on the blue centerline in Wyoming near the Nebraska border.
This is a closer view of the Wyoming/Nebraska border and shows where we set up, on highway 85 south of Jay Em, near the creek/bridge just north of the centerline. We believe we at
Lat 42 deg 25 min 03.09 seconds North
Long 104 deg 21 min 22.56 second West
with a total duration of 2 minutes 28.8 seconds of Totality
From:
http://xjubier.free.fr/en/site_pages/solar_eclipses/TSE_2017_GoogleMapFull.html?Lat=42.41752&Lng=-104.35627&Zoom=17&LC=1
elevation 1399m (4590 feet)
42° 25′ 03.09″ N <—> 42.41752° 2m 28.8s (total solar eclipse)
104° 21′ 22.56″ W <—> -104.35627°
Umbral depth : 97.48%
Umbral depth : 1.4km (0.9mi)
Path width : 109.4km (68.0mi)
Obscuration : 100.00%
Magnitude at maximum : 1.01442
Moon/Sun size ratio : 1.02958
Umbral vel. : 0.744km/s (1665 mph)
Event (ΔT=68.8s) Date Time (UT) Alt Azi P V LC
Start of partial eclipse (C1) : 2017/08/21 16:24:58.2 +44.5° 120.5° 288° 13.0
Start of total eclipse (C2) : 2017/08/21 17:46:19.8 +55.5° 146.7° 108° 07.6 -1.1s
Maximum eclipse (MAX) : 2017/08/21 17:47:34.2 +55.6° 147.2° 200° 04.5
End of total eclipse (C3) : 2017/08/21 17:48:48.6 +55.7° 147.7° 291° 01.5 -0.6s
End of partial eclipse (C4) : 2017/08/21 19:13:33.8 +59.3° 186.3° 111° 08.4
If we had made it to the actual centerline, totality would have lasted 2 minutes 28.9 seconds
Lusk elevation 1599 m (5246 feet)
This has been our constant companion for a month now… a snake in the observatory. Ewwwww.
At least he still leaves fairly easily when pushed out the door.
The Torus telescope control computer is named Galileo and is a crica 1999 pentium 3 class system with an 80GB IDE drive that is also about 15 years old, toggled to pretend it is only a 32GB drive, that being the limit of the ASUS p2-99 motherboards BIOS. The drive gets very hot when spinning, typical of its era. We decided to try and replace it with a 32GB SATA SSD drive with an IDE to SATA adapter.
The $13 IDE to SATA Adapter was:
https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B002SZDOM6/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
This was the $30 drive we settled on:
https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00W3HKSPU/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
The software used to clone the drive was this: Crucial Data Transfer Suite with and Apricorn USB to SATA dongle and EZ Gig IV cloning software.
It took 6 attempts before everything finally worked out. The software has the ability to resize a larger drive to a smaller drive if the space is unused, but it takes time. With the added strangeness of a 32GB limit jumper on the 80GB drive, the drive adapter and linux partitions with some complex setup, the first few times did not work out.
In the end, it did start up, and continued to do so over 5 more reboot tests. Yay! Less power used out in the observatory, a faster newer drive, cooler, and less prone to suddenly fail!
Our first photo of a monarch butterfly near a milkweed that is not part of our butterfly gardens. go figure!
We have two butterfly gardens on the property to encourage them to arrive, congragate and help pollinate the veg.
Milkweed we tend to leave growing in most places that it comes up, unless it gets in the way of walking paths or grass cutting.
The SCGO Great Garlic Harvest of 2017 has begun.
We pull up only the garlic that is ready, with 2-3 leaves dried out. Since there are over 75 types, we need to keep them separated and named through digging, carrying, cleaning, rinsing, and hanging to dry for a month.
This is the “before” image of the 2″ wooden adapter between the telescope primary cell and the 2″ focuser.
It is needed as the original setup included the filter wheel, which is no longer operational… so it was removed, leaving a 2″ space.
It is made from high quality plywood and has been coated in a few layers of varathane, to help stop it from absorbing air moisture. We imagined that it does change in thickness depending on the humidity, so asked amongst our membership for a metal worker… and we found one. Thank you Keith!
Keith machined this, and a second smaller one, focus mount adapter. At this time we are only using the larger section, approximately the same size as the plywood version, for focus range testing with the ZWO ASI120MC camera and the SBIG ST402 (circa 2006) camera.
This is the final mounting configuration. The focuser will be used all the way in, for standardization.
We will run some focusing tests with each camera and record that information on the observatory wall 🙂
We spent some time working on the Torus telescope and Tardis observatory yesterday.. maybe an hour working on the wheels and rail transport and then moved inside to work on the telescope. About 10 minutes in I make the startling revelation that I was not alone.
Rick made mention of hitting his head on his telescope large counterweight a few times before padding it. I did indeed hit mine as I recoiled.
This had been inside, keeping warm on the heat vents of the UPS that powers everything in the Tardis, *watching* me!
Kim was kind and brave enough to get it into a bucket, and then released into the wild.
Not far away enough for my liking!