A different view from the observatory

That's London in the distance.

The Canary Wharf neighborhood, which I remember as being nothing much, is now a new finance center. I would never have recognized this as being part of London if I didn't already know it was. Forty years ago, none of those buildings were there.

The building in the foreground, with the long rows of columns on either side, is a former royal residence called the Queen's House, which is now an art museum.

Greenwich Royal Observatory

We've had two field trips so far for my class: the trip to Cambridge on Thursday, and a visit to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich the week before. The observatory was very interesting--I got to stand straddling the Prime Meridian--but old telescopes aren't very photogenic. So, unlike the visit to Cambridge, there are a manageable number of photos to share.

This is one of the mural quadrants installed during Edmund Halley's time as Royal Astronomer. This is a kind of telescope mounted on a quarter circle frame on a wall aligned north-south. This allowed the astronomer to measure the angular height of the star being observed.

Saturday reflections

The Corpus Clock in Cambridge.

It's situated outside the Taylor library at Corpus Christi college, and you can see a little of the towers of King's College across the street in the reflections.

It was conceived and funded by John Taylor, an alumnus of Corpus Christi, and is as much an art installation as it is a clock. It does have the basic machinery of a clock, but turned inside out. There are no numbers or hands, and the time is indicated by slits emitting blue LED light. But it's only accurate once in every five minutes, symbolizing the irregularity of life.

The clock was first displayed to the public in 2008, unveiled by Stephen Hawking.

The Breakfast Room, exterior

The Breakfast Room seen from the Fellows Quad. (It's the windows on the second floor, to the right.)

The Queen's Room is over the archway.

The Breakfast Room

This is actually something new at Merton: the room where I'm having my class this year. In previous years, I've been in perfectly ordinary classrooms that might be found in any college setting anywhere in the world, but for some reason this year I'm in this beautiful sixteenth century room. (Since we're studying cosmology, maybe the scheduling office had a sense of humor and liked the contrast of viewing Powerpoint slides about black holes and quantum mechanics on a screen with drapes hanging on either side and a marble pedestal on top.)

The room next to this, where the group sitting at high table on a particular night assembles for drinks before dinner, is called the Queen's Room. Henrietta Marie, wife of Charles I, lived in these rooms for several months during the English civil wars in the 1640's.

St Michael graveyard

I always love old churchyards.

For your safety and comfort

I loved these upholstered cushions for kneeling in the church. So much more comfortable than the barely cushioned wooden kneelers I spent many uncomfortable hours of my childhood on.

Two windows at St Michael

St Michael and All Angels

Back to the Yorkshire Dales.

This 12th century church in the charmingly-named Hubberholme has an All Creatures Great and Small connection—the interior scenes for the wedding of the James Herriott character were filmed here—but it's a beautiful little church well worth a visit even if they'd never managed to squeeze a TV production crew inside it.

The author J.B. Priestley loved Hubberholme, and his ashes are buried in the churchyard.

I am actually back at Merton

The second week of the program started today, but this is the only picture I've taken at the college—the gates to the Fellows Garden on a perfect summer afternoon yesterday.

I have enough pictures from Yorkshire and more recent excursions to go through, and I think I've already photographed every square inch of Merton by now.

Sunday bird blogging

A rook perched on one of the sarsen stones at Stonehenge yesterday.

It's not a great picture, but at least I had a longer lens this year, so it's better than the tiny starlings I photographed there last year. At the time, I wrote, “I don't imagine I will ever get to post a picture of birds at Stonehenge again,” but I'll gladly make it a habit if I can.

Saturday reflections

It's surprising to me that it's only been two weeks since I took this picture—it feels like forever ago.

This is from the hot Sunday when I got lost in Oxford and at one point found myself in a tunnel underneath the Rewley swing bridge. It was kind of creepy actually, but the reflections were nice.