Tag: journal

Another Try

Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS is seen to the right of The Milky Way.

Stayed up past bedtime for another crack at seeing Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS. It was more difficult to pick out, but with a little squinting I found it in a much higher position than the last time we spotted it. Without dark clear skies it would have been impossible to see.

The comet is racing away from us, back to the Oort Cloud, and getting dimmer and smaller by the day.

I took quite a few photos on different camera settings. Once I go through them I will share more here. The photo above is a panorama of six shots stitched in Adobe Lightroom. It was taken on a much higher ISO than I usually use for astrophotography, but was necessary with the lens I was using. Well worth losing some sleep over.

Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS

The tail of Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS extends above the cloud cover.

We have been battling the clouds but was able to get one picture of the comet tonight. It is not the greatest picture due to having my camera set wrong. It does show its long spectacular tail.

Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS is rising in the sky, providing we get some clear skies there should be more opportunities to see it.

It will be very interesting to see how it interacts with the waxing moon.

Late September

Willow the truffle smelling hound.

It has cooled off a bit, both temperature and tourist wise, thank God! 

It is the mature tourist season, older without children. Some of my young coworkers call it, ’the newlywed and almost dead’ season.

It has been another trying year. The arrogance, rudeness and entitlement of the tourists seems to be getting worse, if that is possible. Quite a few youngsters who came to work in tourism decided it wasn’t for them and I can’t blame them. My advice is to put on an extra thick layer of skin armour. Skin armour is something that my daughter Maddy invented. You put on to get you through the rudeness that accompanies many work places. July and August it needs to be bullet proof.

***

Another Provincial Election is upon us. The NDP against the new Conservative Party.

The old Conservatives caved in and formed the new Conservatives. Make no mistake they are the same bunch. What was once the Social Credit Party became the BC Liberal Party, then they became the BC United Party and finally they handed the keys to the BC Conservative Party.

Our MLA of Liberal/United persuasion heard the klang of a party in disarray, so took his new pension and added it to his other government pensions and called it a career.

Now we have a couple other opportunists lined up to take his place. 

I can’t even express how little these cagey, scheming, cunning two-bit politicians to be do for me. Whew, say that four times fast.

Regardless, in this riding we are going to have a new one to deal with. The only question, not that it makes a bit of difference, will it be a Conservative or NDP, both retired teachers by the way. Both ready to add another generous defined government pension to their portfolio. It is tough to keep pigs from the trough.

***

These are the way things are. You have to put up with tourists and politicians. Sometimes you need damn good skin armour. What the hell. Regardless of it all, it’s good to see the coming frost, the ripe tomatoes daily, the empty back roads, salted mountains and golden tamaracks. That’s plenty.

Reflection

Spent the night along the Palliser River. Plenty of fires had burned the area. I crept along looking at the fire, where it started and how it progressed. At night I woke up at regular intervals to document the movement of stars. Jupiter and Mars in Taurus. Orion following behind, a signal of cold to come. The northern lights made an appearance, but didn’t last long. The smell of fire permeated the cool night, the stars kept track as they always have and the sound of the river lulled me back and forth from this world and one of peaceful dreams.

Fires

Stepped outside a few minutes ago and took a photo of the sun. It is red from the forest fires burning nearby. It has been hot and the smoke has rolled in the past few days. It can and probably will get a lot worse. The moisture seems to be getting sucked out of the earth.

Giant sunspots can be seen on the sun. The photo was taken with a 200mm lens. I have cropped a great deal of the photo as the sun took up a small part of the frame.

It is the smoke acting as a filter that makes this photo possible, but it also shrouds the detail.

Still the sunspots are big. Every bit as big as the one that erupted in early May that caused those magnificent auroras.

The moon will come up shortly when the sun dips and could be as red rising in the east. These colourful cosmic bodies could be a harbinger of doom, yet in their own right, hold an otherworldly elegance. Nature’s reminder that we aren’t in charge nor ever will be.

Stars

An array of colours along the path of The Milky Way. This is ten photos stitched together in Adobe Lightroom. It spans from North to South looking East.

Tried again, this morning, to spot Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks. This comet could be beyond Willow’s and my ability to track down. It is very close to the horizon beside the Andromeda Galaxy. By the time it rises above the mountains the sky is losing darkness. Also, we haven’t had super clear skies and the thickest haze is always closest to the horizon. That haze is in fact pollution. That’s why many cities have beautiful sunsets.

The moon as it appeared just after dark.

It is funny in a ridiculous way, our summers are filled with smoke from forest fires, now the spring and fall also has it’s share of smoke, as the provincial government and logging companies burn slash piles. Slash piles are all of the waste wood left over from clear cut logging. There is a lot of waste; branches, rotting wood, stumps, small trees, basically any mess the companies leave behind is pushed into piles and set ablaze.

The core of The Milky Way returns signalling spring and the coming summer. The green haze is a combination of haze, light pollution and maybe even some stardust. Lake Windermere still has its layer of winter ice.

It would be interesting to know if these C0 emissions are counted as industry emissions or if they get tabled under forest fire emissions. The latter not counted towards Canada’s yearly emission targets. Regardless, it is another case of the government saying one thing and doing another. The entire valley could drive around in Diesel Ford F350s for years and not emit the pollution that one of these massive slash piles produce.

I don’t think there is any big conspiracy involved, I just think government is incompetent in this regard.

This is how a panorama looks when I am stitching it together. This is ten individual photos taken left to right with overlap. This image is five frames wide and two frames high. The lens used was 20mm, which is wide, so a lot of the sky is captured. I did not do a very good job of keeping the bottom of the photo even. It can be difficult as it is dark and I can not see through the viewfinder, so it is done by feel. The bright lights in the distance is Invermere.

This and That

The local newspaper reported the current School District 6 (Rocky Mountain) Superintendent has left their position. In usual School District fashion the reason for leaving or if severance was paid was not disclosed.

The local School District has operated behind closed doors with very little public access to information for many years now. In the past, information on use of pesticides on school grounds, wage hikes for administration staff, staffing issues, school space inadequacies and allegations of abuse have always been restricted regardless of the public’s interest and right to know.

Of course it doesn’t help that local media has become bare-boned and unable to pursue and report on these issues. The days of strong local journalism is long gone. . . Replaced by Facebook. . . Lord help us!

***

CBC reported on a study done by the RCMP examining coming threats that could affect policing. They included world affairs such as wars, environmental issues, economy, political polarization and extremist movements. The report painted a bleak future to say the least.

It made me think how, in our small community, how unprepared we are for these coming obstacles.

I don’t believe we will be helped by local government. Unless it involves development or tourism they are uninterested. Environment, homelessness, climate change and health and welfare of common citizens are not exactly their strong suit.

It is difficult to forget during the height of the Covid pandemic, when federal and provincial medical officials were recommending not to travel, our small town officials went on Alberta media telling tourists the Columbia Valley was open for business and to come and visit.

It was that kind of thinking that resulted in many low paid service employees getting sick, including fifteen people who I knew personally. Some of them got sicker than others. Luckily everyone got through it, but the severity of Covid was not known at the time. It was dangerous for our politicians to ignore the best scientific advice at the time to assure cash registers kept ringing.

It makes me think that it will be up to the citizenship to band together in the future to fight coming threats mentioned in the RCMP report. It may not be possible to rely on government and certainly not local government.

I believe the larger the government the less effect it has on our lives. For instance, our Federal MLA is a man who has rarely, if ever, stepped foot in Invermere. He is a long time party back bencher, and for all intents and purposes ineffectual and all but invisible to his constituents. He certainly doesn’t dictate policy that influences lives in his riding.

Our Provincial MLA is much the same. However, we do see him more often and he can bring forward concerns in the Provincial House. Still, his ability to change anything is limited at best and nonexistent at worst.

But our local governments, Mayors and council members can make a big difference, good and bad, to the lives of the people they are said to serve. It is interesting to note these members, although paid well, are paid substantially less than their Federal and Provincial counterparts. Regardless, they are often awarded in other ways due to their control of local policy, thus you often see wealthy businessmen such as realtors, business owners and developers in these positions.

I think history has shown, one can’t depend on politicians, regardless of stripe or office, to do the right thing for the majority of people. The best we can hope is that what is good for them is also good for the majority. Most of the time it is.

Who knows what the future holds.

Chilly

The Columbia River.

It has been a mild winter, excluding this past week of -30 Celsius temperatures.

Lola after falling through some thin ice on the rivers edge.

The cooler temperatures have been welcomed by Lisa and I, as they have been accompanied by clear skies.

A friend with a solar panel system that keeps track of sun light recorded only 4 hours of sunshine in December. The rest of the time was overcast. That is not unusual here in the winter.

The mountain looks to the clear, cold sky.

To see the sunshine and stars, that have moved considerably since the last time seen, has been a relief regardless of the chilly air.