i win

dude, hello 3:40am

so i got my wish... when eric finished his homework, he emailed me to see if i wanted to go star looking... it was so clear when i packed up my telescope into the car, with just a fringe of clouds on the southern horizon... half an hour later, when we got to where we usually go to stargaze, the whole sky had clouded over except for a patch around jupiter... not wanting to have made the trip for nothing, we set up quickly and watched until it was covered in clouds too... interesting observation: every other time we've seen jupiter in the last 2 weeks, it had 2 moons on one side of it and 2 on the other... this time there were 3 on one side and 1 on the other.

once there were no stars/planets to watch anymore, we chased a plane (i have a high power reflective scope, so there's a viewfinder that's just to look through to center where the scope is pointed without magnification, then another place to look in where you actually attach different size eyepieces to change magnification with it etc. eric used the viewfinder to center on the plane and then moved the scope with the plane while i got to look through the magnifier... we did that last time too... conclusion: planes look really funny in telescopes -- it's a fun game.

then, having run out of celestial objects AND planes, there were a herd of deer watching us again from 50 feet down the road, so we centered the scope on them... since the scope is reflective, the light coming into it hits a big parabolic mirror in the back which bounces back to a straight mirror to aim the reflection out through the eyepiece... if you're any good at optics, you know this means that the image you see in the scope is upside down of what you see in real life. while looking at stars or planets this isn't noticeable since it's enlarging points of light, and how the heck are you supposed to know which way is "up" looking at another planet? but looking at the deer, upside down, was hilarious... (maybe we just have a little too much fun with the telescope, who knows... we found it funny at least =P)

having finished watching wildlife too, we tried to model how the phases of the moon work with our shadows and a streetlight, and are puzzled about "new moons", but had a fun time indeed.

so that's my star-less stargazing story of the night.

now, i've written up all i'm going to write up for lie groups... colleen called earlier to compare notes on how i was doing and it turned out at that point in time (5 hours after i left them) i had exactly the same amount of work done and on the ones i asked her about her answers to, i had deduced and proved the same, so maybe working on my own isn't all that bad after all. =P

now to clean up so i can go to sleep... most of you know i can't stand working at desks and would much rather write on a book in my lap, so when at home i generally work sitting on my bed with everything spread out around me... lie groups is so tricky though that i have 8 different reference books spread out everywhere, a stack of scratch paper, a stack of real paper, my notebook, and my lapdesk (one of the greatest inventions ever)... in other words, a big mess. oh bother.

i'm done rambling for today... really... class in 7-8 hours... if i'm still up and not 100% sure on the quality of my homework, though, why do i win? because i have no more homework due til tuesday now and no majorly time-consuming plans for the weekend, so i can take a day off tomorrow after i go to lie groups lecture... that's a party... and tomorrow is subway day too! how party is that?

really, i'm done now. the end.