The weather turned out better than expected at the annual picnic of the RASC Toronto Centre. It was held at the Carr Astronomical Observatory, near Collingwood. You know you’ve found the right address when you turn into the driveway and start seeing plaques with scaled distances of the planets of the Solar System…

I was honoured to have my burgeoning efforts in astroimaging acknowledged with the 2022 Ray Thompson award. It was the first picnic since the Pandemic, so a lot of awards were given out then.

It was also lovely to see a number of folks I hadn’t seen since our April trip to Texas to catch the total eclipse, or the trip to Torrance Barrens in May to see the Kp8 aurora.

The TeleVue Hydrogen alpha solar telescope was set up, and the prominences looked incredible. There was one that reminded me of the fountain in Woodbine Park, but which scales several times the diameter of the Earth.

Unfortunately I was unable to image it as I couldn’t get the backfocus working on the Canon DSLR someone lent me.

Ironically, I had to get back home to submit my images for the 2024 Starfest Imaging contest, the deadline of which was midnight. I submitted these with a couple minutes to spare…