June 24 – Open House at the Observatory

After some more rainy days, the weather on Saturday was sunny and not too warm for the open house and awards picnic at the astronomy club’s observatory.

In the morning everybody pitched in to clean the place up. I did some lawn mowing. They have two riding lawn mowers. This one is called The Stargrazer and the other, a green John Deere, is called the Green Flash.

I had never used on of these before so it took me a while to figure out all the controls.

Around 2 o’clock, those of us that felt like it went on a short hike. We did a short section of the Bruce Trail and a side trail that makes a 4 km loop around the property.

Tony, the hike leader, explained some of the geology of the escarpment.

Out of the forest and across a field.

Looking down on the house and observatory on the right, with a lenticular cloud high up on the left.

Lots of puff balls on the field.

A few flowers.

Back into the forest along a creek.

We passed by a few nice small waterfalls.

We haven’t had a fungus picture in a while.

We stopped to look at some pillars.

And then back out on the road to return home.

The view from the road down to Georgian Bay reminded me of the famous Windows background picture.

Lots more people here now.

While we were out, some kite flying was in progress. The guy is serious. He said some of his kites were in the $400 – $500 range.

Some of us went into the observatory and put a solar filter on the scope riding on top of the big scope to check out the sun. My setup, to the right, look pretty tiny in comparison.

We saw some sunspots and, around the edge, one very large prominence and a bunch of smaller ones.

Outside, others were looking at the sun with their own scopes.

Next was the annual tradition, where Tony launches some of his model rockets.

Everybody brought their chairs over to watch.

People who were here for the first time, got a chance to push the launch button.

I put my camera in high speed mode, where it takes 6 frames a second. Once the countdown got to one I would push the shutter button and it would fire off a burst until the camera memory filled up.

The small rockets were very fast. I could get the rocket ignition and then one frame of it part way up before it was too high.

Jennie’s turn.

Where did it go?

The big ones were much slower to get moving, even though they had two much larger engines. I could get a lot more pictures of it in flight.

Chute deployed.

Coming in for a landing. This one was close by and easy to find. The wind carried some of the smaller ones a long way.

The launch pad showed the effects of the rocket motors.

One of the members taped a small camera, facing down, to this one.

Afterwards we all gathered around to watch the video.

Later we had an awards ceremony and then a prize draw. Jennie and I had not gotten a ticket so I asked for one. Jennie didn’t want one but a friend insisted so we got the last two tickets. It turned out that they drew Jennie’s ticket for the grand prize of a club hoodie jacket.

Next was dinner. Everybody brought something to BBQ and then had potluck contributions for appetizers, salads and dessert. We all ate too much.

At about 11 pm the skies got clear for about 2 hours. Some of us did imaging of objects in the sky and in between looked through the large scope with everybody else at interesting visual objects.

I took images of the Dumbbell Nebula. It is another star that blew off its outer shell.

Taking the images is only part of the process. This picture is made up of 6 5 minute exposures. Once you have the raw data the real art is combining and processing (photoshopping) the resulting image to bring out the details without overdoing it. I am still a real rookie at this part.

There are a LOT of stars in this part of the sky.

A crop of the picture to get a closer view. You can see why it is called the Dumbbell.

I am doing this post on Tuesday the 27th. On Sunday after cleanup just a few of us stayed until Monday. There was another short window of clear skies that night. On Monday we drove up to our cottage. Today I spent opening it up as it has not been used yet this year.

June 20–22 – Owen Sound Waterfalls

First, we discovered that this little bird decided to lay its eggs in the parking lot.

Sometimes it would just ignore you as you went by but most time is would do the “Look at me! I have a broken wing!” routine as it ran around.

We finally found the eggs and put some cones out so no one would park on them. There is no nest and the eggs are really hard to see.

Tuesday was an on and off rainy day so we just stayed in. Today (Thursday) was a very rainy and windy day so … ditto. Yesterday we did a tour of the local waterfalls.

First up was Eugenia Falls. The falls are right next to the parking area but the main lookout doesn’t give a very good view as it is right at the crest.

Farther along the gorge there was a small hole cut in the trees. Still not a full view though.

Further still, there was no fence and just these trees leaning out over the cliff.

One more peek at the falls. From the wear on the trunk of the trees (below) it looked like people had actually climbed out to try and get a view. One slip and you fall about a hundred feet straight down.

 

The morning was mostly cloudy but as were were leaving a patch of sun gave us a short lived rainbow over the falls.

There was a memorial to the WWI dead from the town of Eugenia. For such a small town there were quite a lot.

Onwards to Walter’s Falls, which are on the grounds of an inn that lets the public in to view them. It does limit where you can go though. No climbing down the gorge.

The view from the inn patio.

There is a walkway (in the picture above) that goes out to the top of the falls.

And the photosphere from here.

Behind the falls is a small dam and an old mill.

A nice place for a wedding.

Onwards. The road around here are very straight and because of the valleys you can see a long way.

And a photosphere because why not?

Next was Inglis Falls, near Own Sound. Again the falls were right next to the parking lot, after we paid our $6 admission to the Conservation Area.

We first walk to a bridge at the crest. Not much to see here.

Above the falls was a small dam for the mill that was here. I love how the water flows so smoothly over the edge.

There was an official viewing platform to the side. After all the rain we have had, all of the falls were really roaring.

The photosphere. Too bad I cut Jennie in half.

We had lunch and then took the short trail that ran along the edge of the gorge.

We had to climb down and around some large boulders.

A slightly different view.

Near the end of the normal path there was a crack in the rock where you could eventually make your way down to the river.

It first led to an interesting enclosed area.

The rock was so flakey it looked like you could easily break off a layer.

The photosphere.

Father down we got to the river.

The falls were obscured by some large trees.

But I did a photosphere from the rock anyway.

Jennie found this interesting root.

Back up to the top.

Time for a flower break. The local garden society took care of a small garden in the parking lot.

Sorry but I love flower pictures.

Next was Jones Falls. For this one we actually had to walk in about 1/2 km over a muddy path right along the river.

The river does a very sharp turn around a small point just before the falls.

You can’t see much of the falls from here.

This is the best view we got from the top of the gorge.

The photosphere from here.

I found a spot where I could work my way down.

There was so much spray when I got down that I had to cover the camera, quickly flip it up for a shot and then get out.

If I had tried to do a photosphere I would have gotten soaked.

Jennie wanted a shot of this boulder mouth eating the tree.

The final stop was Indian Falls. We really had to work to get to this one. It was only 0.7 km in but the trail had some tough spots. The first part looked very easy so Jennie didn’t take her hiking sticks, which she later regretted.

Most of the trail was literally right next to the river.

A huge log jam.

Whenever the hill beside the river got too close the trail just continued on.That meant trying to stay upright on a steep muddy slope. We only slipped a few times.

Made it.

It almost seemed artificial how even the edge of the falls was.

Heading back.

Last night turned out to be a great night for astronomy, very clear, not too windy and not too cold. The only problem is that at this time of year it only really gets dark enough at about 11:30 and then only for about 4 hours.

There were three other people here. Each of them owns one of the domes and have much more elaborate setups than I do.

Since I don’t think I had used my scopes at all last year, the night was dedicated to just remembering how things are setup and how all the software works to actually take a few pictures.

It was such a good night that I wish I could have stayed up longer but with all the other activity yesterday I only lasted until 1:30 am.

Just to remember what I did here are a few of the very quick shots I took.

M13 is a globular cluster of about 100,000 stars, that orbits our galaxy.

A crop of the picture above.

M16 is a gaseous nebula. It is in the plane of the Milky Way so there are a lot more background stars.

M57 is called the Ring Nebula and is the remnant of a supernova explosion. It is not really a very good target for my small telescope because it has such a wide field of view but I like looking at it.

A crop of the picture above.

And to bed.