We didn’t go through to the Young Trad Musician finals this year as it was the day of an Edinburgh Scandi Session. As it happened, there was a great concert to go to in the evening anyway – Vishtèn were appearing at the Traverse Theatre bar.
When I was a lad it used to be called a total eclipse of the Moon. Now the media call it a “super blood wolf moon” in their continued drive towards the lowest common denominator. We need science and we need people who can understand science, not ignoramuses who are proud not to understand science and who think it is just for geeks.
When I was little my dad used to wake me up in the middle of the night (like last night!) to see eclipses like this; I was always interested in astronomy.
The images were taken at about half hour intervals, from indoors through a double glazed window – I didn’t feel up to going out into the cold! The first was 1/500 sec at f/32, the second 1/500 at f/16, the third 1/100 at f/8 and the final one in totality 1/10 sec at f/5.6. All with the zoom at 200mm focal length on a Nikon D3100. The composite image was put together using the Gimp tool in Linux.
From China Space Agency at http://www.cnsa.gov.cn/n6759533/c6805166/part/6780096.jpg
Wonderful to see these superb images from the Chinese lander Chang’e-4 on the far side of the Moon. See more in the BBC News article and the originals on the Chinese space agency website.
I’m hoping that I see people walking on the Moon again in my lifetime.
Yesterday I went to my first fiddle evening class for a while. I’ve rejoined the class at the Scots Music Group, as the Fiddle 7 tutor is now Mairi Campbell and I really enjoyed her workshops on improvisation and Cape Breton music at the Fiddle Festival in November. The Greenbank Buskers have some stuff coming up too, and of course I won’t be neglecting the nyckelharpa – I’m going to one of Vicki Swan’s workshops near Morpeth in February. Then of course there are lots of sessions to go to …