We trekked out to Aldergrove on Saturday to see the Perseid meteor shower (you've got to get out of the city lights in order to really see the night sky) and put up the tent and have a fun time. Metro Vancouver does all kinds of events like this throughout the year in different parks and they're all fun -- go on the Metro Vancouver website or get their "Check It Out" brochure. The events are often free and sometimes for a minimal charge ($2.00 for this one and you could camp all night and there were all sorts of activities to do -- there were a bunch of telescopes set up and storytellers and demonstrations of how gravity works and things like that).
Unfortunately for falling star viewing, the moon was HUGE. It was a "super moon" which means that the full moon phase coincides with the moon being close to the earth, so the moon looks a lot bigger than normal. And it was super bright, too! And when the moon is super bright, it's hard to see faint stars or lots of meteors. But we did see a few. It was the noisiest camping I've ever done -- there was a real tent city and people everywhere. But we arranged ourselves in our lawn chairs and sleeping bags and just stared up at the sky and the whole tent city ooh-ed whenever a meteor streaked through the sky.
The highlight was seeing Saturn in the telescope. You could actually see the rings. What would it have been like for Galileo to see that for the first time? (I think it was Galileo.) What would you think? Something you thought was a perfect sphere turns out to have these bulges on either side.
On another note, I stumbled on Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries at the library a couple of days ago in the express book section. Have you ever read an express book? The library puts books that are in great demand there and you can take a book out for a week, but after that you pay a fine of a dollar a day. If you know anything about The Luminaries, you know it's a huge tome and also that it won the Man Booker Prize in 2013. So this is my project for the week. It is set in gold country in New Zealand in 1866 and it traces the mystery of a dead man and a opium addicted prostitute. It has a bunch of colourful characters (I'm having trouble keeping everyone straight -- in this respect, it's like a Russian novel) and makes a number of references to astrology which I don't understand at all, but it reminds me of this tv show that Mike and the boys loved called "Bering Sea Gold". Everyone's mucking for gold and it's down and dirty and the characters are trying to feel each other out to get a sense of who's telling the truth and what everyone's agenda is. I can picture everyone with dirty fingers (just like the characters on "Bering Sea Gold") and messy hair and world weary faces. So far, I'm finding it pretty compelling stuff -- you look up from the book and realize you're not in Hokitika any more!
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