Day 8

Day 8

Today was a busy day for me relatively speaking. I compiled and stacked all the images that we took of the moon and Mars. Then I put them into photoshop and played around with the color and contrast. I think we can actually see Syrtis Major in one of the images of Mars, which is a bit impressive considering the resolution we have on the telescope.

I am a happy kitty.

The moon images turned out pretty awesome as well. By manipulating the color and contrast we can see quite a bit of the craters in remarkable clarity. Derek did a good job. I think we're going to go out again tonight and take some images of the comet that is passing in front of M33 tonight. It's supposed to be green, I'll be very curious to see if that's the case.

I caught the mouse yesterday. Well, one of them. We named it This Mouse and then received an email concerning the hantavirus which was found in the area. Apparently mice spread it through their urine and its fatal. We placed This Mouse outside to be safe, and when we woke up this morning he had escaped from his little cage. We put up more traps around the HAB to try and cut down on the mice problem. So far we've only seen two.

Also yesterday Derek and I had an adventure with making breakfast for dinner. We attempted to make pancakes on the top of the stove which is kind of small and cramped. We ended up using too many dishes and frying the pancakes one at a time in a skillet instead of trying to work two to a pan. We only had egg beaters, not real eggs, but they tasted yummy with a bit of salt.

I did manual labour today and it was fun. We cut up some boards to make a skirt around the HAB to prevent wind from cutting under the building, then we dug some holes to drop the wood boards into. The ground appears to be frozen on the backside of the HAB, however, so we could only get as far as the ground had thawed.

Jeff's got his head in the toilet again. We're all really tired despite being allowed to sleep in this morning. Auvi's doing great, but even David took a small nap this afternoon. I feel tired after lunch, but today I worked, so the lethargy was beaten out of me. I feel good.

When I first got here, I was amazed that Ben could walk around without a jacket despite the freezing temperatures. Now I realize how he was able to do that. You get used to it. I was outside, granted I was digging holes but still, and I was in a t-shirt. It felt lovely, and I think the high today was only about 30F.

My hands smell like sawdust now. Or whatever was in the gloves I was wearing today. I hope the smell comes out soon, it's kind of irritating on my nose.

Firefly last night was one of my favourite episodes: Safe. Auvi listens to some good music.

I should have brought more socks. My entire room smells like feet. I'm also fairly certain that my jeans used to be blue. Now they're a kind of reddish color.

Night monkey out.

End day 8