Category Archives: Fun

Next one is a bit of a wait…

On Friday Brandon and I drove up to Beaverton Ontario to stand on their beach to try and spot Comet A3, we were successful!

It was super faint to the naked eye, barely perceptible but the cameras and our nods allowed us to see it very clearly.  Comet A3 won’t be back for another 80k years so it’ll be a bit of a wait for it’s return. 😉  Saturday night we went out for a night walk as a family and while we could see the comet with the aid of our night vision devices, it was pretty hard to see with all the light pollution coming from Toronto.

That makes 3 astronomical events that I shared with Brandon this year and man, it was a good one.  Our weekend was really good and I hope you had a great one too.

Auroras!

A geomagnetic storm hit the planet last night (and tonight too, though less severe) so after Brandon’s BJJ I took Maggie out to find the auroras and we were successful!

I was running two cameras but for some reason set them up looking in the same general direction ugh what a newbie mistake.  Anyway a quick timelapse that I thought turned out pretty well. 🙂

I’m still around

As I mentioned earlier I don’t have much motivation to post on my blog these days, not sure why but I will try to keep it more up to date (I’ve said that before).  My back still hurts and I’m going to physio, there’s one central point just off to the right of my mid back that’s very painful but the physiotherapist, after doing her thing seems to show me where other aches and pains are.  It’s not the end of the world but annoying, she was saying it may take 4-6 months to recover!  Pretty crazy but then again I’ve never been in an accident so this is uncharted territory for me.

This weekend, Brandon went to the Cub Scout camp to assist and he had a lot of fun!  My little niece Georgia went as well and from what I’m told she said it was one of the best experiences in her life which makes me so happy to hear.

With Brandon away on Saturday Maggie went to play badminton while I played Pokemon with my local group here in Oshawa, came home at 1pm then we went up north to chase the auroras.  There was a large solar flare and accompanying CME earlier in the week but it ended up being nothing unfortunately.  Still I got to show Maggie the stars and they were absolutely beautiful.  We went to a new spot which I think I’ll make my default astro photography location moving forward as it’s much quieter than being on highway 60.

The first photo is looking North, top 3rd of the photo just off to the right you can see the Andromeda galaxy and it’s amazing that the light that we’re seeing started its journey 4 billion years ago!  When you see stars like this, it really makes you feel insignificant…  On the second photo I screwed up and missed focus, not sure how that happened but if you don’t zoom in to pixel peep, the photo still looks pretty good.  I believe the galactic core has set and won’t be around again till the spring but it’s still fun and it’s nice to check out how the new location is.

The Lexus RX 350 is great it’s a super comfortable car to drive in, not very exciting but that’s not what I’m looking for right now.  As something to soak up the KMs, it’s absolutely perfect.  Pretty dirty from the dirt roads I had to drive on (especially Friday when it was wet dropping Brandon off at camp) but I think I pissed someone off because there’s a large scratch on the right side running from the front fender over the two doors and onto the rear fender.  Sigh that’s why we can’t have nice things…  It’s not too deep and I’ll try some wax to see if I can buff it out.

Overall a good weekend, had a lot of fun but pretty tired so I’m going to bed early tonight. 🙂

Ouch!

I’m off Tuesday-Friday this week so I could spend some more time with Brandon and this morning we went to Silverdale.

Shooting is great bonding time and he enjoyed himself as well as starting to get better, just needs more practice.

On the way home though we definitely had a bit of a shock.

This was on the QEW just before Mississauga Rd, it was stop and go traffic and well the big truck couldn’t stop in time, hit the black van which then hit the back of my car.  The van slid into a white van in the passing lane (we were all in the middle) so it was a 4 car accident, ugh!  I feel lucky the black van was in between because if it wasn’t that truck would have hit me and the damage would have been a lot worse.

I called the police, two officers showed up an hour later traffic was terrible so not surprised it took so long.  They talked to us individually then told me I can drive home if I wanted to so I did.  The Lexus drives straight and felt fine (except for the error message about the parking sensors not working) so I hope it can be repaired though when I got home and opened the trunk I could see the rear was pushed in a bit, not sure if that’s bad or not.

Called insurance, gave them all the info and told them I have a dashcam with video if they wanted to see the accident but I think it’s pretty clear what happened so let’s see how long this one takes.

Amazing experiences

The sun ejected a few CMEs the Earth’s way last week and the first hit our planet on Friday and continued throughout the weekend.  Since it was clear, I took Brandon hunting for auroras and it was an amazing experience to s hare with him, to say we were successful is an understatement!

The first photo is of the sun, the suns pots on the right side of the picture, that’s where the storm erupted from.  Friday night the Kp index which gives you a rough idea at how significant the storm was at max, Kp9 and rated as a G5 geomagnetic storm (analogues to hurricane category ratings) and the auroras were so bright, you could see the greens, reds and purple colours with the naked eye!  Each photo is either a 2 or 4 second picture, absolutely wonderful!

Unfortunately Maggie had a badminton game early Saturday morning so she didn’t come with but yeah I was able to share this wonderful experience with the boy. 🙂

Obviously the last two photos have nothing to do with the auroras, that’s actually from a few weeks ago when we went to take pictures of the solar eclipse that came through, also shared that event with Brandon.  Definitely feel very fortunate that I can share these types of things with my boy and I hope that he remembers them forever! 🙂

Quality time!

Took Brandon to Silverdale this morning to do some shooting and it was great!

Brandon got to shoot his GSG-16 rifle, he enjoys it quite a bit and even though he didn’t initially like the recoil from 9mm pistols, he enjoyed shooting the Glock 19 on the steel plates. 😉  The ting from striking steel is very satisfying and I’m glad I can share this wonderful hobby with him.

Thanks Andrew!

My friend Andrew made me three helmet display stands and they look freaking awesome!

Allows me to balance the helmets out and it looks great on the shelf behind me during video calls. 😉

End of year vacation

We went on vacation to Myrtle Beach (yes again) the last week and while it’s not cold here in Toronto, it was much warmer and nicer down south.  My mom accompanied us down so she and Brandon shared a room.  It was a very laid back vacation, we’ve been there many times so we mainly enjoyed nature and the beach.

One of the days, Brandon and I did break off and go for a nature walk and to do some birding (more on that later), for the short hike it was interesting that it felt like walking around nature at home but I didn’t recognize the trees or leaves on the ground.  We visited WonderWorks, it’s kind of like the Ontario Science Center but a bit more fun oriented.

For birding, Brandon and I mainly walked along the Myrtle Beach and saw a bunch of brown pelicans and seagulls fishing (and fighting over food).  We also visited Huntington Beach state park where we saw the some egrets and a pink spoonbill fishing in the marsh.

I haven’t taken many photos recently and this trip really revitalized my love of photography which was great.  I also spent some really amazing quality time with Brandon, some of the best moments I’ve had in the last little while… On another note, Brandon really liked using the Canon EOS R6, let’s see over the years he went from the Canon T4i to M50 to RP to the R to now the R6, lol what a lucky kid huh.  He did mention how he wished he could get closer to the animals and yeah his EF 70-300mm lens is a bit short, debating if I should get the new RF 100-400 as that thing looks to be a great value.

We came back yesterday afternoon and you could tell Slinky really missed us. A great way to end 2023, today we’ll just be relaxing at home as I’m tired from all the driving and enjoying the last long weekend of the year.

Jupiter in opposition

Last week Jupiter was in opposition (closest point to the Earth) so I took a photo and it worked out pretty damn well!

Amazing that you can even see the various bands of the clouds on the planet!  That and the 4 Jovian moons are also visible which is amazing.  One of my best photos, I’m really happy with this one.

Brandon is home!

Picked Brandon up from camp last night and it was great to see him. He said he had a decent week, though was frustrated at the younger kids for not listening and messing around when instructions were given lol yeah that happens.  Next year he wants to attend but as a leader in training instead, he saw a few of the older scouts doing that and thought it’d be fun.

Before I picked Brandon up though I went for a walk with Mike, he wanted to explore the trails at Edward Gardens so I arrived an hour early to take a picture of the bugs and they did not disappoint!

I was using the Canon RF 100-500mm lens and it’s macro capabilities aren’t bad at all at 0.33x magnification (though I’m not selling my Canon RF 100mm macro lol).  As for the park, when Mike arrived, we walked down the main path down to Sunnybrook park.  He wasn’t feeling super hot though so we turned back soon but it was really nice to get out and walk around at least.

With Brandon returning home, I slept much better last night.  He has a lot of experience outdoors so I was not worried something would happen but still I feel better when he’s around.  I’ll sleep the best after Maggie returns from China, right now that looks to be around middle of August but we’ll see.