August 15th, 2007

Only a few weeks left of the summer holidays and then its back to work again. Brian is slowly improving from his bout with shingles. It has been taking it's tole on the pair of us, but more on him, poor guy. Well I haven't been too idle, though I haven't left the house. I have been doing lots of cooking as can be seen over on the food blog. Here are some of the cards I made to send to my friend down in Cornwall to help the animal charity. There are a few more, but I didn't want to bore you all.





I finally got that old mirror out of the shed that we bought a few years ago at a boot sale, and decorated it. I was wanting to put seashells on it and hang it in the garden. So on one of the really warm days that we had, I got out the super dooper glue that was left over from putting up the backsplash in the kitchen. And used it to put the sea shells on the frame of the mirror. I was wanting to hang it on the fence next to the patio. But after seeing it hung personally I didn't want to be seeing myself in the mirror while sitting outside. So we have it hung on the side of the shed at the moment. Showing off some of the flowers. It is quite funny as Jingles keeps looking at his reflection in it. Silly cat!!!

Something that I have been doing on the computer (actually probably spending way too much time on the computer!!! :) has been keeping me busy. Analysing galaxies!! My count so far is 11,760. The web site is.... http://www.galaxyzoo.org/ and their goal is to analyse 1 million galaxies. Well the response has been really good and they are all analysed once now. So they are trying to get 20 classifications for each galaxy. That should keep the 50,000 members busy for a bit. I am learning alot about galaxies and what is out there in space. Since I was little, I have had an interest in space and astronomy. But never really got past the looking through the telescope part of it. I watched all the Apollo missions I could and Space shuttle launches. But this has become a bit addictive and I am not bored with it all, as each time you click a new galaxy or star or whatever appears!!! Here are some of just a small sampling of the galaxies I have seen and analysed. And be careful you may well become addicted too!!!

This blurry blob is an edge on spiral. But it is the red blue green lights at the top that is the interesting bit. That is an asteroid!! It is quite exciting to think I have spotted an asteroid out there in space.

This one is a barred galaxy.

This is two galaxies merging together. Apparently our own galaxy the milky way is going to someday merge with another nearby galaxy. Wonder what that would be like.

This blue object I think is a planetary nebula.

This one is an edge on galaxy and the line of brown you see is dust.


This is two galaxies merging and forming a question mark.

This is a very exciting galaxy for me. It's name is NGC 7787. And I was the first person to notice that it is figure 8 shapped. I even recieved an email from Chris letting me know about it. (Chris is one of the important folks doing this project.)

Here we have a star forming blue galaxy next to an anticlockwise spiral galaxy.

This is one of the lovely huge galaxies that can pop up on your screen when you least expect it. It is a clockwise spiral.
Well I won't bore you too much with any more galaxies. Brian is going to get me my own Anorak soon. (That means I am being a bit of a galaxy geek!!!) Well it keeps me out of trouble and it means I am not out spending money either. :)