And so the good mood returns, with a vengeance. Today was a splendid day. The seeing was fantastic well into the afternoon, and we observed a group of sunspot in an active region where flare after flare was going off before our eyes. The data set from today alone might provide for a year’s worth of analysis and at least one paper, say the observers. Exciting!
And I wrote a whole page on my master’s thesis. Ugh, it feels like writing uphill and my brain is standing still or gets distracted by just about anything, and most of the formulations that eventually do come out are utter rubbish, but at least it’s a start. It tends to become easier after a while, that writing business. (speaking of which I should quit neglecting my poor book and get the bloody editing started…) But anyway! A page about dwarf spheroidal galaxies is better than no pages.
I went for a walk in the Sun, and lay down to look at the clear sky and listen to the occasional birds but mostly the silence. I made pancakes and watched another marvellous sunset. And I felt happy and thankful and not one bit stressed. Yay!
Have also been visiting the Nordic Optical Telescope one evening, which was especially exciting since the data on which I’m basing aforementioned master’s thesis was taken at that very telescope. Now that I’ve seen the place and know what their observing is like those images of faint fuzzy blobs somehow feel more real, and if possible even more intriguing than before. It’s a piece of reality seen through the inherently biased senses of some of our most high-tech understanding-the-world machines, and now it’s up to me to try and make some sense of it. Science, isn’t it great?
Love and sunshine,
Winterdragon
