|
|
|
The Sky at Night |
|
|
|
Written by Stephen Baines
|
|
Friday, 06 October 2006 |
It's been a good week so far. The weekend seemed to be a constant battle against the thunderstorms. We were lucky, our neighbours had their internet connection knocked out by the huge thunderstorms. The thunderstorms were really impressive and for the first time in ages we saw forked lightning. The chickens didn't seem that bothered by it, neither did our elderly cat. The brave hunter, Troy the Weimaraner, cowering and really quite worked up. Poor thing!
One thing that's really noticeable here is how little light polution there is. Despite the thunderstorms we've had a lot of really clear night skys recently. The whole sky is a mass of stars, and sights that aren't easily visible in the UK are visible here, such as actually being able to see The Milky Way, and even more amazing for the first time I ever I realised that some of the stars that make up <a href="http://www.glyphweb.com/esky/default.htm?http://www.glyphweb.com/esky/constellations/plough.html">The Plough</a> are actually <a href="http://www.dibonsmith.com/uma_con.htm">double stars or binaries</a>. For something you take for granted to not be the thing you thought it was for 30-odd years is really quite something. One of the stranger outcomes of this is that it's a lot harder to spot Orion due to all the extra stars in the sky...
Tuesday saw our latest Swedish lesson - in this we have great news. The local kommune has decided to put on two teachers for the evening class, so the dummies (myself, Nigel and a lady from Poland) can have a teacher to ourselves to get us going. This week we covered more Swedish than the last 6 weeks put together. And being British it was obvious what we were going to have to cover... Yes, I'm afraid we can now talk to our neighbours about the weather.
The little chicks are not so little any more, and our first eggs from the Blommehöns are now just starting to pip, so hopefully this weekend we should have some more chicks. We did almost have some other feathered additions this week, with the ducks from a neighbour deciding to spend a good part of the afternoons up in our part of the stream.
<img src="http://gallery.vollans.co.uk/d/11243-2/visiting+ducks+001.jpg" alt="Visiting Ducks" />
The garden generally is getting more appealing to the visiting wildlife, with more and more birds coming to visit, especially now that we've set up a bird table for them.
<img src="http://gallery.vollans.co.uk/d/11200-2/PICT3216.JPG" alt="Visiting Robin" />
The preserving and bottling for the winter goes on, with seemingly gallons of apples being preserved, and elderberry cordial being made. Our first batch of apples had to be thrown away when the cat decided that the bowl being left to cool was obviously for him and in he tucked. |
|
