Sunday, 20 December 2009

The morning after

Filed under: Photography — Tags: , — George Privon @ 11:39

This morning has been a beautiful clear day so far. It started out cold, but has warmed up considerably of the past few hours. After a quick breakfast I put on my snowshoes and walked around the neighborhood to check on road conditions. Last night someone came through and scraped all the snow off the road, leaving a 1/2″ layer of slush. As to be expected, that froze last night, leaving a sheet of ice covering the only open lane out of the subdivision.


Tracks from last night

Further on, the main road is actually in decent shape.. one lane of packed snow which should be usable if the appropriate amount of caution is taken.


Avon Extended

The sunshine and snow made for some nice photographic opportunities. I’ll link a few of my favorites here, but you can follow the link at the bottom to see all my storm related pictures.


White Christmas

Grove

For the rest of the pictures see: Storm in Charlottesville on flickr.

Saturday, 19 December 2009

Aftermath of the storm and an inspiring encounter

Filed under: Photography, Skiing, Virginia — Tags: , — George Privon @ 23:35

I again took the opportunity to do some skiing around my part of town this evening. There was a bit of light snow as I started, but it quickly stopped. I started by skiing up the hill again…


Christmas Lights

Getting a bit further up the hill I saw a second car stuck on the hill. I had actually encountered this car (and the occupants!) the previous night as they worked to free their vehicle. I was unable to help, and it unfortunately appears they were ultimately unsuccessful.


Stuck

The combination of snow and odd lighting made for some eerie scenes. As I took this picture a driver backed their car out of the subdivision after making it haflway down the hill, only to be stymied by a stuck car left in the middle of the road.


3 Trees

After I skiied up the hill the road opened before me on the ridgeline. This normally busy road was completely quiet. Just the occasional “whoomp” as my skis settled into the twenty inches of powder…


A road to myself

I continued skiing down the road, aiming to make it at least to the grocery store a mile from my house.


Where I came from / Where I'm going

The traffic light ahead of me eternally green, waiting for me to ski through the intersection underneath it.


Green light for me

After over an hour and a half of skiing and shooting, I arrived at the parking lot of the grocery store. Despite the early hour (20:30), all the stores were closed and the parking lot populated with an assortment of cars left to sit until the snow is cleared.


Abandoned?

After standing underneath the bright lights, I turned around and began skiing back. I soon encountered a couple walking along the road. They explained their car was stuck, but they lived close and were enjoying the walk through the snow.

A few minutes further and along came another couple, walking down the middle of this normally busy road. “Hello.. are you stuck as well?”
“Nope.” (smiles), “We are just walking to visit a friend.”

We continued on separate ways, walking to visit a friend, and skiing down the icy center of the road leading home…

Time Lapse Shoveling (video)

Filed under: Virginia — Tags: , — George Privon @ 14:19

The storm is still raging here in Central Va. I’m hearing news that trees are down and that some folks have lost power. I woke up this morning and measured about 18″ of snow in my driveway. I spent half an hour shoveling around my car and another 0.5″ fell in that time:


Shoveling from George Privon on Vimeo.

There’s probably around 2 ft on the ground now and it’s still coming down. However, the radar suggests the worst has passed.

Taking advantage of the snowstorm (video)

Filed under: Skiing — Tags: , — George Privon @ 01:12

Central Virginia (and much of the East coast) is currently being snowed under. I suspect I have roughly 8-10″ of powder outside and it’s still coming down strong. A few hours ago (when it was only 6″ deep!) I took my AT skis and skins for a lap around the neighborhood. I shot some footage and condensed it into a short video:


Central VA Alpine Touring from George Privon on Vimeo.

Tuesday, 15 December 2009

Conclusion of the Semester (not yet!)

Filed under: Astronomy, School — Tags: , , , , — George Privon @ 22:04

Certainly 2009 is beginning to wind down. In a week I will be heading to Idaho for Christmas. But, there’s lots to do before then!

The most pressing is certainly grading the last few labs for the 100-level Intro to Observing class. Final grades are due soon so I have 30 or so labs left to grade. 10 or so are the “Navigation by the Sun” lab, in which students use a sextant to determine the latitude and longitude of the lab area. If done carefully, it is possible to determine the position of the lab area to within a nautical mile. Generally though, the accuracy is such that students can only say they’re somewhere in the state of Virginia. Still though, not many people can say they’ve ever used a sextant!

Right after the New Year is the American Astronomical Society winter meeting in Washington, DC. I will be presenting a poster based on my MS thesis. Of course, the poster still needs to be made!

The last task that needs to be accomplished is the assignment of TA duties for the Spring semester. Fortunately, this doesn’t need to be done until the beginning of January. But given the complexity of dividing up the lab duties in an appropriate manner between ~10 TAs, it takes a bit of time (and iteration!).

So, that’s the list of glamorous things in the life of a grad student at the end of the semester.

Sunday, 13 December 2009

All over the place

Filed under: Astronomy — Tags: — George Privon @ 22:24

I’ve been quite a few places on the last couple days.. Friday in Charlottesville, Saturday in Washington, DC, Sunday in Charlottesville and (digitally) San Fransisco.

The SF event was quite interesting.. the 2009 Fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union begins tomorrow. Various people from the Solar Dynamics Observatory (including Aleya) are at the conference. An “Ask a Scientist” table was hosted by SDO as part of the pre-meeting events. So, for 4 hours I monitored the Exploration Station twitter feed where people could ask questions. I answered the questions, posting them under the NASA_SDO username. It was fun to answer science questions for people. They ranged from “How old is the Sun?” to “Who was the best scientist?” I was scrambling on occasion when I’d get multiple questions within a minute or two (especially ones that required a bit of research!). I had a great time with it though.

Friday, 4 December 2009

Visit to ASTRON winding down

Filed under: Astronomy — Tags: — George Privon @ 10:05

My week long visit to ASTRON is coming to a close. I am spending the rest of today wrapping some work up on a paper. It isn’t quite finished yet, but certainly closer and will be manageable to finish soon.

Additionally, I had observations of two sources using the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope during the middle of the week. It is always exciting to get new data and this data certainly didn’t disappoint! It looks like we have detected the neutral gas in two luminous infrared galaxies. It will be interesting to compare that to the abundance of other data available on these objects.. More on that later though.. once I have done a proper data reduction.

Tuesday, 1 December 2009

Star Trails and Meterology(?)

Filed under: Astronomy, Netherlands, Photography — Tags: , , , — George Privon @ 18:02

Tonight is the only night since I’ve been in the Netherlands which could remotely qualify as “clear”. But, since it’s all relative I can tell you how “clear” it was. As I was letting my camera go for a few minute exposure, I noticed a plane flying close in projection to the moon. I was initially hoping to see the plane silhouetted against the moon, but as it flew closer I realized that wasn’t going to happy, but something possibly even a bit more neat was going to…

As the plane flew “past” the moon, it was still close enough that it’s shadow was projected onto the thin cirrus which was abundant in the sky. So, based on that I can say with some confidence that the altitude of the clouds is greater than 0m and less than about 9000m! :)

But, to the real point.. I was able to get a few pictures of the Dwingeloo 25m radio telescope. Despite the moon and haze, there are a few star trails evident. Taking even a 5 minute exposure (with the aperture open) was too long! It might have been fun to stop the aperture down and take some 30 minute exposures, but with the cool air (-4C!) my battery wasn’t lasting.


Under the 25m

The 25m and stars

And finally, a picture of the heath by night..


Heath by night

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