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.

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. 🙂

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.

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.