Jupiter

I got the telescope out last night and pointed it at Jupiter. Being Dad's old birding telescope, I wasn't expecting much but it showed Juipter up as a small disk with faint markings and all four of the main moons strung out in a diagonal line like this :-



(From http://web.singnet.com.sg/~ngkguan/astro09.htm)

The tripod I have is not very good and it was difficult to focus it very well but it was enough to be interesting. My daughter was fast asleep and my wife said it was far too cold to be outside. Maybe a well-wrapped up trip to the Coastguard station one night would be in order. There is a large car-park right by the station and it is often full at the weekends. You can drive the car right up to the promenade and read the paper with the wind and rain battering the car. Sometimes, people are warned not to go there in case they get washed away. Out in the estuary, there is a large wooden post held up with diagonal spars which was one of two Mile markers used by ships entering the Mersey to estimate position and speed. The othe one was ..er .. a mile upstream but it vanished some time agao only to be found during the construction of the new Crosby Leisure Centre, buried in the dunes. It must have been a slow news week because this made the front page of the local paper. This reminds me of the recent question about a day when the BBC cancelled the radio news because nothing happened and played Piano Music instead. This actually occurred on Good Friday 1930 (see the Day with no News) but it must have endured for some years because either Morecambe and Wise or The Two Ronnies did a sketch where there was no news on TV so they showed a piano player who was subsequently shot which of course brought the news-reader back on screen with the breathless announcement that a Piano Player had just been shot. I know it's not very funny but it's a classic all the same even if I can;t remember who it was. I am pretty sure it was Eric and Ernie. Not up to the standard of the Singing in the Rain sketch or Breakfast to the tune of The Stripper but OKish.

It is a wonderful, cold and sunny winter's day here. The haze is lying over the city softening the vapour trails and trying its best to define a line between the sky and the ground but it looks more like those pictures kids do before they understand perspective and leave a gap between the land and the sky. Sky is up and land is down. What is at the join? The infinitesimal! I hope it stays as nice for the weekend. A long walk in the cold somewhere would be nice but then again there is a Pop Art exhibition at the Tate. It's actually about shopping but the union of that set and Pop-Art is large. Spot the allusion to Venn diagrams from all those years ago at school. Actually Venn Diagrams make good art on their own. Maybe you could create an artwork by asking people questions about themselves and then displaying the results as Venn Diagrams. Even better and this is quite exciting, get the visitors to the exhibition to answer questions about themselves using some form of computer equipment and then display those results as Venn Diagrams on huge wall-mounted screens. You could extend the questionnaire to be web based as well and use those data. Apart from the wall-mounted displays, all of that is within my ability and possession at the moment. Sounds like the result on an Oblique Strategy doesn't it? The starting point was me asking Martin for a random phrase to kick this off and he suggested Jupiter. I learnt Venn Diagrams before I went to secondary school but I do remember my O-Level maths teacher doing a lot about it. His name was Mr Pears and he is third from the left on the Front row (Those sitting - not the charming children doing the Harvey Smith Salute on the floor) in this picture. I am sure he is dead now but I remember him as an excellent teacher as was Mrs Pearce who is sixth from the right (again on the chairs) in this picture (which is the left half of the whole thing). It is strange to think of all these Cherubic looking children being into punk rock and ska but they were. I wrote 'puck' rock there which is probably a Freudian slip relating to the rural aspect of our school. I don't think I will ever go back as no-one would know me now. Mrs Pearce may still be there but surely no-one else?

Longing sigh! resigned shrug of the shoulders and back to work.