Tuesday, March 24, 2020

The story of our Mongolian Pear Tree

The world may be preoccupied with the Covid-19, but we had another problem. One morning last week we heard a series of cracking noise from our garden and a large branch broke off from our large Mongolian Pear Tree  (Pyrus ussuriensis) right before our eyes. Fortunately for us it did not fall on the roof of our house but instead over our back fence and harmlessly onto our neighbour's garden. Its trunk was damaged and the tree was unsafe. We sought and received our local coucil's approval to have the tree removed.  It was a tree we planted about 25 years ago soon after we moved in.

The broken branch.


The damaged trunk.

The young tree in 2006, about 10 years old.

In full autumnal glory in 2011.
 
The tree men preparing for the tree's removal.

Another reason why we did not do it ourselves.
This was why we needed professional help.



Finally, the tree was removed.


Monday, December 30, 2019

Boxing Day annuar eclipse in Singapore - A whole new experience

What a treat to have a second eclipse viewing in 2019. It was not another total eclipse that we usually chase after, rather an annular one.

Annular eclipses are not spectacular (said an eclipse expert to us), because they are usually viewable only through eclipse glasses or filters; the sun may be more than 90% blocked by the moon, but it is still too bright to look at with the naked eye. However, there are visual effects similar to those of totality that could be be interesting..

But this one on Boxing Day particularly appealed to us for a couple of reasons; firstly we had never seen one before and secondly it was going to be visible from Singapore.

Of course one has to be pessimistic about eclipses in the tropics with high probability of cloud cover and difficulty of forecasting weather behaviour. In fact, on Christmas Day, the day before the eclipse, the weather experts were still predicting cloudy skies and even rain.

Even though on the morning of Boxing Day, Eclipse Day, the sky was quite clear, I knew that it might not last as the heat and humidity of the tropics could soon form clouds through the convection of warm moisture air. The eventuality of afternoon rain in the early afternoons is well known it would coincide with be the peak of the eclipse peak at 1.37pm!.

A couple of days earlier I had found a spot on the large roof top garden of the Changi City shopping centre. It is a quiet shopping centre and not likely to have a throng of curious eclipse watchers jostling for space. Indeed at the predicted "first contact" time of 11.22 am, I was practically alone apart from a man with two young children and a business man from a nearby office. I passed around my eclipse glasses to share the view of the first "bite" with the few uninitiated people around me.

11.29am, about 7 mins after First Contact.


It would take a keen eclipse observer to be intrigued by the rather uninteresting image viewed through a solar filter and I expected the enthusiasm of the people around me to dissipate quickly. To ensure they did not miss the more interesting part, I suggested, especially to the man with two children that they return in an hour when more of the sun would be covered.

The other person next to me, the business man, was surprisingly interested. At my suggestion, he quickly downloaded an Eclipse app and started searching for any future eclipse in Japan - for he married a Japanese!  He also started attempting to take mobile phone photos through one of my eclipse filter. It was clumsy but he managed some.

Having been through a number of total eclipses in the past, I took only a few photos in the early phases as I was only interested in the main part of the event, when the annular eclipse starts.  I would activate my Pluto Trigger to fire my SLR with bracketed shots every few seconds over a four minute period that included one-minute annular phase.

A few more people joined us. The man with the children did return and surprisingly also became quite absorbed with the gradually disappearing sun, which was becoming more and more like a crescent.

12.36pm, about an hour and 12 min after First Contact.


Soon nearly everyone was trying to take photos using my eclipse glasses passed from hand to hand. One discovered that photos are easier with the glasses held slightly away from the camera, which I was never to test out for I was busy adjusting the camera to keep up with the shifting image as the earth rotates (Ah, I should have invested in a sun-tracking mechanism). I was also worried about my tripod being knocked over by the surrounding people.

As the time gets closer to the annular peak, more people turned up; there was a group of Muslim young ladies, workers in their overalls and amateur photograpers with powerful telephotos (but no filters). My wife and my sister also joined us, having shrewedly decided that the eclipse event was only worth watching at the climax, not the build up to it. My sister would have preferred that we join the thousands at one of the publicised parks where at least the atmsophere of a crowd would add spice to the otherwise non-event.

Many asked us questions about the eclipse, and Kay and I found ourselves the provider of eclipse information unlike in the previous eclipses when we were mere amateurs in the company of astronomers and solar scientists. This time, we were the experts!

Soon we had more to watch than just the slowly thinning crescent - the appearance of clouds, with increasing thickness in parts. Alas, is this the game spoiler that the tropics has always been promising?

The sun would totally disappear, and then teasingly reappear, and people around me would rush to snap more photos. We soon realised that there were fleeting moments when the crescent was easily visible to the naked eye, and mobile phone cameras, through the clouds. Indeed some of the people around had captured interesting photos, with the crescent amidst a blue sky and dark clouds.

Close the maximum eclipse, with the SLR taking photos automatically, I had more time to look around. I observed birds flying overhead, unusual at that time of the day and shadows of shrubs nearby were showing crescent shaped images where the light fell through. Around us the light was subdued and yet there was enhanced clarity as shadows became sharper and contrasts increased.

As we got to minutes before the totality of annular eclipse, there was much tension and excitement because the clouds were playing a game of hide and seek with us watchers. It could be total frustration if the clouds were any thicker or extensive, but they were not.

Maximum annular eclipse. The sun was 94% blocked by the moon.
I had only found out a few days before the eclipse that the annular totality was only visible south of a line across the northern part of Singapore; places like Pasir Ris and Woodlands would only see a thin crescent. In fact, the centre line of the eclipse along which a perfectly symmetrical annulus was visible, ran across one of Indonesia's Riau Islands south of the main Singapore. Where we were in Changi City, the annulus was asymmetrical as captured by my camera.

Ironically, as I found out, Singapore and other tropical places, provide great opportunities for aesthetically interesting partial or annular eclipse photos because the clouds can provide just the sufficient filtering of the sun's ray, as the following mobile phone photos show.



One of the best I have seen from those people around me was Joanne's, another observer in the Changi City crowd.







Monday, July 22, 2019

Eclipse 2019 at Vicuna, Northern Chile

"Show us your eclipse photos," asked many friends. "Why bother," some would say, "They all look alike."  Which is true if one looks at the standard photos, especially those shot with a hand-held point and shoot camera. Such as this one from my 2019 collection of photos.


Image 1 - Corona 2019 eclipse

Image 1 is of course a photo of the moon in front of the sun. The brighter region around the sun is its corona, the gaseous atmosphere, not normally visible because of the concentrated brightness of the sun's surface, but is visible during eclipses, when the bright surface of the sun is blocked by the moon. Interestingly though, the corona is actually hotter than the sun's surface, but being less dense, appears less bright.

Most photographs of the corona look more or less the same, eclipse after eclipse. The amount of the corona visible do vary and but that is partly dependent on the camera's exposure settings..

It is a quirky fact of images that an underexposed photo contains much information that can be recovered by "photoshop", The corona in Image 1 was in fact revealed by "photoshoping" an image such as this.

Image 2 -2019 eclipse

I deliberately  set my exposure low enough so that the corona's brightness did not blank out the more subtle features near the sun's surface - the reddish prominences visible now at six o'clock and 9 o'clock. These are hot plasma gases that erupt and are looped back by the sun's strong magnetic fields.

Compare Image 2 with Image 3, one that I photographed in the USA 2017 eclipse viewed from Madras in Oregon. The prominences were quite different in 2017.

Image 3 - 2017 eclipse


Features of the sun that are of interests to me include the Bailey beads which are spots of sunlight broken up by the irregular surface of the moon.  These are visible in the few seconds before Totality

Image 4 -Bailey beads at the beginning of Totality
and just after the end of Totality - Image 5.

Image 5 - Bailey beads at the end of Totality

And of course, we all like the arguably prettiest part of eclipse observations, the Diamond Ring

Image 6 - Diamond ring, 2019 eclipse

Sunday, March 24, 2019

Kay's Quarter Peal


In bell ringing a full peal is a marathon when ringers ring through a complete permutation of seven bells that requires 5040 changes in the sequence, an effort that normally takes about three hours non-stop. Ringers' fingers and palms often end up raw with broken blisters.

A kinder challenge is the quarter peal (QP) in which ringers ring for 1260 permutations taking about 40 odd minutes, a quarter of the time required for a full peal. It is still an achievement, an important milestone that new ringers aim for. Kay achieved that today ringing with a band of five other ringers.

Congratulations Kay! This a short video clip of the church viewed from across George Street with the bells sounding out.




Ringing World Bell Board


Tuesday, December 18, 2018

Storm damaged tree

We had an electrical storm last Saturday afternoon (15 Dec) that came with strong wind gusts, rain and hail. Later we discovered that a large branch from our large Liquid Amber tree had broken off and fallen onto our neighbour's driveway. Fortunately there was not a car underneath or trapped. Together with a large area of northern suburbs of Sydney, we lost power for more than 24 hours.

The fallen branch did not appear large from our side.

But the neighbour's driveway was totally blocked.
We rang the SES (State Emergency Services). As expected, they were inundated with calls and ours was a minor problem in comparison with many urgent cases where properties were damaged. Still, they were able to come first thing on Monday morning. Their task was to clear free up the driveway and prevent the branch caught up in the tree from falling and injuring people.

A man was sent to the top of the broken branch, hauled up by the crane.

The branch was broken up piece by piece, each brought down by the crane.

On the ground three men cut the branches into manageable sizes.

Cleared driveway
In an hour it was all done and the driveway was cleared.

Where the branch broke.



Some of the debris were mulched but large pieces are left on the neighbours' lawn. We will arrange for these to be cut up and moved to the kerbside to be collected by the local Hornsby Council,



Monday, February 19, 2018

Fort Canning

We found time during a short Lunar New Year stopover to visit Fort Canning. We found a hidden gem, especially after the spruce up of recent years. The historic stuffs are still there, including the Battle Box (where the farcical defence of Singapore during the World War II was managed) and tombstones of old graves (remains exhumed). We enjoyed the walk along the well prepared paths, which was very comfortable with the gentle morning breeze and in the shade of the tall trees. The spice garden of nutmegs, cloves, curry leaf trees and pandan plants, as well as the old kramat were pleasant surprises.

General Percival has not been forgotten, with a road and a flight of steps kindly named after him.

Mythical animal on retaining walls.

Walking path

Percival Steps - downhill all the way (to Stamford Road)

Monday, October 30, 2017

A Cautious Visitor

One day we discovered we had a visitor just under our house's eaves. It was a possum!  Being a nocturnal animal, it left after it got dark. It obviously had other homes because it only showed up every few days.

Kay tempted it with a slice of apple, known to be popular with possums.

Cautiously, the possum inspected it and then quickly devoured it.

Then we discovered it had something in its pouch - a cub!


The cub gradually got bigger. 
They shared a love for apples.



The cub also became more demanding once it had acquired a taste for the fruit.
After visiting us over a period of more than a month, they suddenly stopped coming. We missed them!