Wow, it’s been more than 2 weeks since I posted here, which is unforgivable. And the truth is I don’t have the time right now to write anything insightful, important, or entertaining, so I’ll just give you a quick report on what has been happening here at Wa-chur-ed and in the world of astronomy.
Most of my time has been consumed lately by a project to change the floorplan in my motorhome/mobile gallery. I have removed the dinette and replaced it with a couch. The idea here is to create more open space so that people can move around more freely, which has been an issue when using it as a gallery. I will also replace the carpet and some other small things to refresh the appearance.
Starting the first Saturday in November, I will be doing the holiday bazaars in the area. I’ve registered for 5 such events and am considering a couple of others. The big news here is that I finally got into the Prairie High School bazaar, which is a huge event for which I have been on a waiting list for 2 years. I’ll post more details about these events as we get closer. In the mean time, there is lots of preparation to do, making new prints and sprucing up the appearance of my booth.
Sales have been great this year and it looks like my goal of a 30% increase will be easily met, since I have already passed last year’s total and the holiday season is always the best time of the year for sales.
In astronomy news, the Rosetta spacecraft recently ended its mission by crashing into comet 67P, which it had been orbiting since August of 2014. The crash was intentional. The comet is getting too far away from the Sun to provide enough power for Rosetta, so the mission would have ended anyway, and crashing into the comet provided the opportunity for some closer looks at it (see http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap161001.html for one of the last photos taken). You might also remember that part of the mission was the Philae lander that gave us some earlier close-up views of the comet, but was then lost. Shortly before the end of the Rosetta mission, Philae was finally spotted on the surface of the comet (see http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap160912.html).
Hopefully, I’ll be able to post more in the coming weeks, but I’m afraid that the observing/imaging season is over for 2016, so I won’t have any new images for a while. Oh, except that there are still some I haven’t processed from last summer! There’s another task to put on the schedule.