magnolia

The magnolia tree that had just started blossoming at the end of February a couple of days before meteorological spring, is now in spectacular full bloom, the day before astronomical spring (equinox).

M1 photo

Tonight was quite clear, so we played with the SeeStar telescope.

We got a nice picture of M1, the Crab Nebula.  You can even see colours!

10 minute integration, no post processing

We tried Jupiter, but it was over-exposed, even with the exposure turned down as much as we could.  We need to try playing with the settings a bit more.  We could see the moons, though.

A too-bright Jupiter and four moons. Must try harder.

spots and birds

The sun is very spotty today.

15:54 GMT, taken with out SeeStar telescope with solar filter

The SeeStar allows us to take videos.  The sundoesn't change much, but a short video showed something rather fun.

Blink, and you might miss them.  Here's a still frame:

16:29 GMT.  Is it a bird? Is it a plane? It's ... a bird.

(The wobbly shadow at the bottom is a tree.)

too soon?

 Seen today in a nearby garden, a Magnolia tree already in bloom (just).

It's still winter!  Well, it is technically meteorological spring (if not astronomical spring) in a couple of days, but nevertheless: February!

golden boughs

The rising sun snuck round the side of the house and illuminated our neighbour's tree, whilst leaving out apple tree (on the left) still in shade.  A surprisingly beautiful contrast.

7:35 am GMT, looking north

tubular woes

The second day of Astrofest was as good as the first (better, taking into account I had significantly more sleep last night than the night before!)

Today we heard about: 

• ESA/NASA’s Solar Orbiter mission and its view of the solar poles
• Searching for micrometeorites in piles of dust
• ESA’s Science programme in general
• An interview with Gary Hunt on his 50 years in space science, including his Voyager experiences
• Interstellar magnetic fields, including a description of how the Pillars of Creation ‘fingers’ are pointing at the star forming area, with shock waves from star production pushing on the material, bending magnetic fields to form the fingers
• J-P Metsavainio’s stunning astrophotography, including a mind-blowingly detailed image of the Milky Way (zooming in to which showed lots more ‘fingers’ pointing at star formation)
• How large telescope mirrors are made
• NASA’s Psyche mission to a metal asteroid

Excellent!

Usually, at the end of the Saturday of Astrofest, we dash off to catch a train home from Kings Cross.  But it's always a rush, and the train is always packed.  This year we decided to do something different: go back to the hotel, have dinner, then proceed more leisurely to Kings Cross for a later, hopefully less full, train.

On buying tickets, we discovered there were no trains home from Kings Cross that night, due to engineering works.  The app suggested a cross country route, but we decided to travel via Liverpool Street instead.  Slower than the Kings Cross train, but not slower than the cross-country route, and on a direct tube line from High St Kensington.

So, we had dinner, collected our luggage, and proceeded to the tube station.  Only to be regaled with announcements that there severe delays on the Circle Line.  There were complicated instructions of what to do, but we instead took the District line to Earl’s Court, then the Piccadilly line to Holborn, then the Central line to Liverpool St.  So, not direct, but we did catch the main line train we had been aiming for, although with slightly less leeway than we had hoped!  We arrived home not too late, well fed, and full of great astronomy.  So we’ll probably try that approach again next year (well, eating first, not the grand tour of the underground, hopefully).

view from a London hotel window

I had a very productive and enjoyable time at the ALICE workshop in Copenhagen, working with a great team, modifying and using a system that modifies its own programming language.  We hope to get a paper out of it.  Watch this space!

Unfortunately, the last day of the Workshop clashed with a prior engagement in London: Astrofest 2026.  So I left Copenhagen on the last flight out on Thursday evening.  I knew this was a risky decision at the best of times, and then it started snowing...

The flight was delayed by two hours.

In the queue to board.  Brrr.

That meant I missed the last train from Stansted to London.  Saved by National Express!  I got a coach to Paddington.  I felt very 21st Century as I sat on the coach and used my Greater Anglia app on my phone to cancel my rail ticket and request a refund, for which I was charged £5.

I got to Paddington after 2am: the tube was shut, and there were no taxis.  I downloaded a taxi app (not Uber), and summoned a black cab.  That took me to my hotel off Kensington High Street (and cost more than my coach fare from Stansted).  

I arrived at 3am (4am Copenhagen time), but I arrived.  Five hours sleep, then breakfast (and a photo out of the window) ready for a day of astronomy talks.  

no snow!

The talks were very good, covering the JUICE mission, the Herschel telescope, the Square Kilometre Array (and its relationship to K-Pop; yes, really!), landscape astrophotography (marvellous photos), the history of Guillaume Le Gentil's tragi-comic failure to witness two transits of Venus, and galaxies in 3D (I thought the Hubble Deep field photos were mind-blowing enough; seeing them in 3D takes that experience to another level).

Well worth the travel hassle.  And more tomorrow!