I had made the mirror back in the early 1970's and refurbished the Optical Tube Assembly (OTA) in 2006. I choose this mount design to off-load the torque from the south polar drive bearings. The drive unit is one that was handed down to me. Although very accurate, it could not to the load of the 25 kg OTA. I still have some work to do on the mount to reduce vibration. It is minor but I know the source and I can fix it. I have added a fan to draw in ambient air, speed the cooling of the optics and thin down the thermal boundary layer on the mirror. There are a few more conveniences I would like to add when I can scrounge the gears and motors to make them happen.

This image of Comet Holms was taken on November 8, 2007 as it very slowly drifted through the Constellation Perseus. It was reported to be about magnitude 2.7 (www.cfa.harvard.edu/icq/CometMags.html), or about as bright as delta Persei. This is pretty bright, but remember the comet's light is spread over the apparent area of about the full Moon.

The picture was taken with a Canon Rebel XT set at ISO 800 with FRED (see above) using a Celestron coma corrector. The exposure was 90 seconds.

At this time the comet was 1.621 A.U. (243 million km away). Based on this distance and angular size, the diameter of the comets head is about 1.6 million km - or about 4X the Earth-Moon distance. It is slowly drifting towards the northwest (upper right corner).

The meeting was in the recognition of the site as the first Internation Darksky Association (IDA) "International Dark Sky" Site.

Staff at the Observatory worked with surrounding municipalities to reduce their sky glow. It was reported the program was so successful that it was "like turning back the clock by 30 years".

The two components appear different colours - which is the primary attraction. These colours are more prominent when the stars are viewed slightly out of focus. This lets your eye-brain system work better to descern the colours. Their close proximetry (34 arc seconds) makes it easy for us to distinguish the colour difference.

These pictures were taken at an effective focal length of 10 meters - so they are seen at pretty high magnification. The dark centre in the lower (out of focus images) is the shadow of the telescope's secondary mirror.

The stars of Alberio may be a physical pair. At a distance of about 385 light-years, their separation is about 3-light-weeks apart (asuuming we are seeing the two stars at their greatest distance) for an orbital period of about 100,000 years! This is much too long a time for use to confirm orbtal motion. It is not likely we are seeing their true separation so, the gravitational attraction may be very weak precluding a physical binary.

The yellow star is a K3 II (II = giant). This type of star would have a mass of about 5 times that of our sun. Having used up its hydrogen fuel in its core, it has expanded to about 50 times the diameter of our Sun and the surface cooled to 4400 K. The low temperature results in its ruddy colour.

The blue star is a B8V spectral class witha a mass of 3.3X that of the Sun. It is still fusing hydrogen into helium in its core which defines it as a Main Sequence star (V = Main Sequence star). The temperture of its photosphere is about 12,100 K (based on the energy levels of elements identified it its spectrum). The higher mass K3 star has used up its core hydrogen at a faster rate than its companion causing it to "age" faster than the lower mass Main Sequence star. This suggests the stars could have formed at about the same time, but estimating the precise ages of stars is a tricky business.

There is a much fainter star orbiting the brighter component, but it is too close to the bright star for us to see it visually.

The mottling in the "donuts" is caused by poor "seeing". Warm and cool cells of air rise and fall along the line of sight through the atmosphere. This causes the focus and position of the images to vary. The out-of-focus images let us see this turbulence and even determine distance to the principal source by refocusing on the structure of the turbulence. Calculations in the shift of the focus indicate that it is about 3.8 km.

All this being said - it is still a beautiful sight through the telescope.

There is a good and sad side to this picture. I can now see the northern sky, but two beautiful tall white pines once stood hiding the northern sky. One died following the Great Ice Storm in Eastern Ontario and the other was "blown up" by a lightning strike. Although once a bitter-sweet view, I am growing accustom to it.

You may detect a bit of orange in the lower right corner. This is light from a nearby town reflecting off clouds. The Moon was illuminating the trees and giving a bluish tint to the sky. I have reduced the colour saturation to make the scene appear as it did to my eyes.

Lights from cottages across the lake have increased over the last two decades as a some "urbanites" invade the solitude of the country with their city-ways. I am actively working on changing this urban perspective with articles in local papers and talks to civic groups.

If the air is really calm, ground fog will develop. My observing deck is high enough to keep me above this ground hugging cloud. On this night the fog formed late in the evening and the light of the first quarter Moon backlit the fine water droplets making the phenomena particularly vivid.

Usually this steady air is great for observing fine details on planetary objects, but not this night. The source of bad "seeing" may have helped to produce those clouds.

Urban development has continued so this view is no longer there. Pricey condominiums have been built to hide the "buildings of character" - the Skydome Stadium and the CN Tower on the left.

But the condominium dwellers did not entirely get the upper hand. A couple of marinas have turned on floodlights that shin across channel into all the waterside windows.

The view of a near pristine sky over Lake Ontario is no more. Looking out they are faced with searchlights illuminating their private rooms.

Most of the white lights are from office space. In the "old days" (urban myth or not) it was cheeper to wire buildings with out wall switches and relied on a few strategic switches. Old plans seem to perpetuate, so perhaps the old ways are continuing - even though we know it s iver y wasteful. Sound familiar?

The amber lighting we see in the image at the top of this page are from the overall high-pressure sodium streetlights.

For those interested in the stars, the constellation of Cassiopeia is just to the upper-right of the dome and the northwest corner of Pegasus is above the sky glow on the right. As it rises, the "square" asterism is titled into a diamond shape. The stars Matar and Scheat are at the top of the diamond and the left had star of the diamond is Alpheratz, the brightest star of the constellation of Andromeda.

The small constellation Lacerta (the lizard) is near the top centre of the picture. It resembles a "backward" Cassiopeia that is about half its size.

The Andromeda galaxy (cateloged as Messier 31) is down and to the right of Cassiopea and looks like a small faint fussy line.

I was particularly interested in this "jellyfish" because I woundered if the light from the top and side would affect its swimming pattern. It continued in circles parallel to the plane of the display window's glass. They prey on zooplancton, of which at least some are nocturnal emerge at nighttime and descend in the morning as part of their Diel (daily) Verticial Migration. It is a believed by some researchers that this is a predator avoidance behaviour that is triggered by ambient light levels.

In the future, I hope to set up a light box to investigate the the impact of nocturnal lighting on the development of the aquatic plants.

This tree is at least 60-years old since I clearly remember it when I was very young. Three of its neighbours have come down because of an ice storm, a lightning strike and a bug infestation.

The pictures for this panorama were taken in the summer of 2008. Our efforts to reduce the growth rate of light pollution have had a noticeable effect, but they haven't halted the ballooning light domes - especially those over the smaller towns.

The nearby lights are fully shielded and those in the distance are the old non-shielded fixtures. There are three things you can carry away from this image. Not only is there less glare with the new lights and better visibility, but the new lights were selected to emit 1/2 the light used in other cities. I don't see a problem with this. Do you?

Second we are usually told that the use of fully shielded fixtures require more light poles. Well, the new fixtures used the same old poles without any problem.

The third observation is the extent of the visual clutter from retail lighting along the side of the road. This picture was taken at 2 am and ALL the businesses were closed (except for the McDonalds down the street) with minimal traffic. I wonder if the business owners knew how much money they would be saving if they turned off their advertising lights at midnight?

From this vantage point, the concentration of skyscrapers is most evident. I took two images that provide an interesting sterio pair.

A significnat amount of light from these fixtures is not hitting the ground. Good shielded fixtures would not be visible from this height because the light would be directed downward. Better fixtures would have directed this up-light onto the ground making the illumination of the road more uniform. There is some reflection from my window.

I thought the low Sun brought out some of the texture of the stones. Also the yellow sunlight contrasted with the blue light in the shadow from the clear sky.

Light is required for the safe operation of some machinery when excellent visibility is necessary. This site on the right however, is a storage yard for boats. It is 11 pm and all workers have long since left for home. There is total silence. There are no security guards to see, or act on any vandalism in progress. Indeed, vandals can do what they wish unimpeded by the need for flashlights.

The glare of the flood lights prevent visibility for people on, an off site. Therefore this light is worst than wasteful. It can encourage vandalism and . This is typical of the "knee-jerk" reaction to security. It reduces visibility and encourages vandalism. It is an expensive strategy that misses the point of safety and security. Safety comes with visibility, not glare. And, security comes with on-site personnel not illumination instead of employees.

It is not the waste of electricity that is a shame, but the impact their artificial lighting has had on the neighbourhood. None of their neighbours could take advantage of the rural life style. The all-night illumination turned a quiet side road into an inner-city street.

The image has been adjusted to represent what I actually saw. You can see from the lack of illumination in the trees that the FCO shielding is minimizing light trespass onto neighbouring properties. This is a black and white image, but there was not much colour anyway without outdoor Christmas lights.