Astroblog: Only to be expected, really

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Only to be expected, really

James Place Cameras has shut down! I wandered up there to buy some ASA 400 film for the SLR camera, only to find it closed, dark and empty! This was the best place I found for getting my astronomical photos developed (and very convenient to drop in on on the way home from work).

As I stood there befuddled, the Bettdeckererschnappender weisle rang. She had locked herself outside the house (on a 40 deg C day), could I come home early? As it happened, I had been kicked out of the lab by a fire evacuation. A false alarm due to the heat, but we couldn't go back in until the security panel was cleared, a good 15 minute exercise. Since it was 10 minutes to knock-off time I was on my way when she rang.

So I unlocked the door, only to find she and a screaming horde of kids (some of them our own) had whiled away the time by swimming! It was a bit less of an emergency than I imagined. Then the other parents turned up, and then it was on to the Pub, Schnitzel Night! Yay!

Of course, this is the time the change comes through, so on our walk on the beach, it hads cooled down from baking, but clouds cover the horizon. sighs expressively. Didn't pick up the comet in daylight either.

Astronomical relevance of the photo (apart from showing the cloud that blocked out the comet). The medieval looking tower is the Time Ball Tower, which set local midday by dropping the ball on top of the pole (so that all the achored ships could see it and set their on board clocks accordingly). The time was transmitted to the tower by semaphore from the Port Adelaide Astronomical Observatory.

# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 10:17 pm