Ireland day 0849. Thursday 25 January 2024- WFH and Dunsink *

Ireland day 0849. Thursday 25 January 2024- WFH and Dunsink

Today’s summary	Val has a few days off and I decided to work from home. I needed to update my presentation following the CEO meeting yesterday. In the evening we drove over to Dunsink for the open evening at the DIAS Observatory
Today’s weather	Blustery with some sun and occasional showers. Moderate southerly wind. Appx 12c

Today’s overview location (The blue mark shows the location of our route)		Close-up location (No GPX today)

Commentary

(Summary blog only. Last full blog was Day 0368).

As part of her new work routine, Val gets a lot more time off which great as it means she’s got more time to do things other than just go to the museum and work.

I’m also getting towards the end of my work contract though still have a few more hurdles to cross before I finally draw a line under everything around the end of February. One of the things I have to do is to prepare materials for a Board meeting so today I spent the day working at home, trying to update my presentation to incorporate the feedback from the CEO meeting yesterday.

So I plugged away and eventually managed to come up with something which I think should just about do the job. Tomorrow I’ll have to start on the written paper to go with it. Hopefully I’ll get it finished as it has to be submitted for review on Monday and as we are having guests to stay over the weekend, I will have no more time to work on it after tomorrow.

On a lighter note, in the evening Val and went over to Dunsink for an open evening at the DIAS observatory. i had been to an open evening before but Val hadn’t so we both went along this time and thoroughly enjoyed it. The weather was clear but a bit too windy to get the main South telescope working, though there were a couple of smaller Celestrons out in action so we could have a quick look at the moon and at Jupiter with the Galilean moons. There were also a couple of interesting lectures on Mars and on the moons of the Solar System, which were well done and informative.

Overall an excellent evening out and a good way to round off the day.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


The house is set in attractive parkland and about 15 people work there most days. It must be a nice place to work, although the access road is a bit scrappy	The Telford Premium Telescope, awarded to one Josephy McCarthy by the Institute of Civil Engineers for his work on “Peat Fuel Machinery”. Not quite sure how it ended up at Dunsink

Mars was watery until about 1bln years ago, when the lack of a Martian magnetic field allowed the solar wind to blow away the atmosphere and the oceans to boil away	Four of the solar system’s most interesting moons. The one at the bottom left is Pan – a small “shepherd” moon which has create one of the gaps in Saturn’s iconic rings

Nocturnal view of Dublin from the lofty heights of Dunsink	The Observatory was opened in 1785 and has been in use continuously ever since. The original plans included the two wings on either flank of the main building – but eventually it was built minus the wings

The dome housing the South telescope, with the full moon overhead and Val waiting patiently to get in!