Tag: journal

Early January

Very strange winter. We have had plenty of snow, but temperatures have been unusual. We haven’t had any double digit minus temperatures. The lake doesn’t have enough ice to drive on yet. Many days throughout December have been above freezing.

2024 is in the books. It was a good year. Lisa and I will have to find a better work/life balance as we both worked plenty of hours with not many breaks. It is funny to think, turning 60 this year, and not having pensions, we only have another 10 years of work left to put a little away to ease us to the grave. I say this in jest as I wouldn’t want it any other way. In the past I had a taste of working for the government with the big bloated pensions they offer and it wasn’t for me.

Did a few hikes, but not as many as I would have liked. A few injuries caught up with me. Not surprising considering.

2024 had some incredible northern light displays as the sun reached a a solar maximum in it’s 11 year cycle. Lisa and I were lucky to spend several nights in the mountains under the spiking auroras. The auroras were so strong on one occasion that I was able to detect them when it was still light.

It would be nice to get some cold weather and blue skies, we are half way through winter for Christ’s sakes. Freeze some pipes, bring out the stars so bright you can hear them while all the ancient ghosts take your breath. Freeze the gas line, kill the battery, make the old truck crank and moan. Rosy the cheeks, remind us of all the bits we froze as they only hurt now in the cold. Telling us we can always light it all on fire if we really need to get warm.

Comet & Satellites

This is a closeup of the comet from a couple of nights ago. It is not taken with a telephoto lens. That would require a piece of equipment that tracks the sky which I don’t have. Instead it is taken with a 55mm lens and cropped tight.

Amazingly, 10 satellites can be seen in this photo of a small piece of the sky. You may not be able to see them depending on what computer or phone you are reading this post.

Most of the satellites are Space X communication satellites. It is amazing how many more there are than only a few years ago.There is something about them, that I can’t put my finger on that makes me uneasy. When I see so many it makes me think the world is going down the shitter. I don’t know why I have this feeling.

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.