The Hubble and Venus silhouetted against the sun.

  Thierry Legault is a Frenchman who travelled to Queensland, Australia for the Venus transit. He captured both Venus and the Hubble Space Telescope as they passed in front of the sun. This is a composite photograph – 9 exposures taken in under a second, during which the HST zipped in front of the sun. I’m not going to steal his photo. You can see it at: http://legault.perso.sfr.fr/venus_hst_transit.html I’m jealous.

June 9, 2012
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Helen Bennett

La Palma has a talented aspiring digital artist called Helen Bennett. She left her high-stress job in London and moved to Franceses, in Garafía, with her partner. They bought a fixer-upper and set about fixing it up. Of course this isn’t always smooth going – you can read their adventures at http://casa-estrellas.blogspot.com Helen also did the layout for my book, “The Dodo Dragon and other stories“, and does the layout for…

June 8, 2012
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Helen Bennett

La Palma has a talented aspiring digital artist called Helen Bennett. She left her high-stress job in London and moved to Franceses, in Garafía, with her partner. They bought a fixer-upper and set about fixing it up. Of course this isn’t always smooth going – you can read their adventures at http://casa-estrellas.blogspot.com Helen also did the layout for my book, “The Dodo Dragon and other stories“, and does the layout for…

June 8, 2012
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Breathing Space (excerpt)

June 8, 2012

Dan Gaunt squirted half a tube of Tabasco into his chilli. It still tasted like ashes. He shovelled it in anyway. Kylie, his wife, stared at him. “Don’t you like it, love?” asked Kylie. “Tasteless.” Kylie’s eyes widened. “Chilli with added Tabasco is tasteless?” He slammed his napkin down. The magnets in its corners clanged as they hit the steel table. One broke off, and the freed corner floated like…

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NASA video of the Venus transit

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded this video in ultraviolet ( a wavelength of 171 angstroms.) It shows Venus passing in front of the sun, and also very large coronal loops, which are found around sunspots and in active regions. These structures are associated with the closed magnetic field lines that connect magnetic regions on the solar surface. Many coronal loops last for days or weeks but most change quite rapidly….

June 6, 2012
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Good news, bad news

We now have a shiny new router which should speed up Internet access.  And I have a major case of flat batteries. Mind you, I’ll probably be fine in a day or so, but we’ll still have faster internet.

June 5, 2012
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