Seeing the Venus Transit for myself.

Seeing beautiful pictures of the Venus transit Tuesday June 5 2012 is as easy as a couple of mouse clicks but I wanted to see it for myself. I've spied on a few solar eclipses through pin hole back of a box set ups over the years but I did not have time to fashion one on this day. Of course looking directly at the sun is suicide on your eyes. One web site suggested using a binocular lens to focus an image of the sun on a white surface and with only a half an hour before the sun started to dip below neighbourhood trees I managed to focus a wiggly image of the sun on our front door. I needed to set the binoculars onto something solid so I improvised a chair, shoe and the dish towel I was using to dry dishes at the time into a tripod. I was so pleased to see that tiny black dot on the suns white disk I think I shouted!

Here's the set up.

Here's the scale.

And here's what I saw.

Thank you Sandra for taking these pictures.

I guess you can tell I get excited about science! Look up the history of this event and you will see why. 

Iceboating on Hamilton Harbour

Me and Rachel, Sarah, Lester and Dorothea (& Sandi taking the picture) out on Hamilton Harbour today sailing Lester's DN Iceboat. "Wait a minute Dad - that boat's going faster than the wind!" That's right - over 5 times faster! 11 KPH winds today. You do the math.

Petroglyphs in Temagami

Last week my daughter Rachel and I headed up to Temagami for a few days of wilderness canoe camping. We are not especially keen on fishing (which is supposed to be quite good) or wildlife (plenty of beaver, loons, ducks) or geology (mountainous shield, upthrusts and cliffs) but we did hope to find some of the petroglyphs that are mentioned from time to time in ads and blogs about the region. In a survey of writing about the region 2 locations are mentioned. One is near the "drop" from Diamond Lake into Lady Evelyn Lake. We reached this location after battling into 40km headwinds for 2 days. The second is on an Island in Wakimika Lake. This location was unreachable to us as we had become too tired to continue on into these headwinds. The lakes are large enough that the swell combined with the wind to make paddling unpleasant. In Diamond Lake we had to examine several rock faces because no one can say exactly where the rock paintings can be found. On some faces we found evidence of recent chiseling. Portions of the rock face were removed or destroyed (stolen? inter-tribal in fighting? were cited as possible causes). We saw many shadows, cracks and Lichen patterns that could all be mistaken for petroglyphs but no actual painting was found. We supposed that if one was shown precisely where to look, perhaps some faint shadows of former markings do exist. Without exact GPS coordinates or similarly accurately measured instructions it does not seem possible to find anything. The region is beautiful, the camp sites were very nice, the insects were not bad at all, the water is warm, except for the wind (which accelerates between cliffs and hills) the weather was very nice so all in all Temagami offers some great canoeing/camping. We hope that future Temagami advertising and literature excludes mention of petroglyphs because these are just too hard to find. If one is attracted to the region solely for this purpose then disappointment will be the result. Oh! And these are big lakes and big hills. Be prepared for the wind and steep portages. ADENDUM: Oct 3 2010 I spent some time talking with a former Temagami guide today. This person spent 2 months paddling the Lakes and rivers in the region and never saw a Petroglyph!