🤳 The team took a group selfie using the engineering camera — the first time light went through the complete telescope and hit a camera detector!

🔭 The team did important testing and troubleshooting with the engineering camera

Had a lovely #Christmas eve enjoying lamb and druze bread dinner, cookies, and really terrible Christmas-themed movies. This is not the Christmas we planned but it’s the one we needed.

It's not Christmas Eve until the Chipmunks are singing carols on my stereo. #Alvin #Simon #Theodore

Happy holidays to all of you who celebrate long days or long nights, who look at the sky and wonder, who have struggled to apply the critical thinking toolkit to discern fact from fiction. It is good to be together on this small planet, our blue cosmic gemstone, and to do what we can to cultivate peace and knowledge.

Sigh. The holidays. Every goddamn time.

When @SNOLAB earns its homonym!

Really loving the water tower in downtown #Sudbury. I feel like we are being visited by aliens.

Looking for a last-minute #book for someone who is interested in science, especially #physics? Check out "Reality in the Shadows", written with Frank Blitzer and Jim Gates, and "The Friendly Physics Guide to Nuclear and Particle Physics in Medicine"! These are both deep but friendly tours of the #cosmos.

The second book comes in 2 volumes, the first for a general audience and the second for physics students.

https://steve.cooleysekula.net/books/

Had a wonderful time working at the Xenon Still project today @SNOLAB to help the team get ready for more science running. This still is a basic research project designed to help us understand some fundamental information about cryogenic distillation of noble gases.

It is a lovely morning for a day in the underground lab! :-)

Looking forward to getting a computer cable installed today that will take us to the point where we are ready to launch a major run of a cryogenic distillation R&D facility for noble gases.

@kwlug out of curiosity, are these presentations recorded and/or archived somewhere. These subjects are fascinating but, alas, I live in Sudbury.

I really enjoyed seeing the National Ballet of Canada's production of "The Nutcracker". Definitely the most original version I have seen since our love of this ballet was ignited in San Francisco. We struggled to find a good production in Dallas (the Allen Performing Arts Center hosted the best one in the Metroplex... Fort Worth's was awful), but Toronto has just made our entire holiday by hosting this novel and beautiful production.

https://national.ballet.ca/productions/the-nutcracker/

Huh. Quite a name to emphasize for a shipping group.

Got some lovely optics going on this afternoon.

And just like that, it is lovely again!

Here is radar of more of the lake effect band. Pretty cool. Also a little scary.

We just passed through an impressive band of lake effect snow. This is the lighter side of it. It was snow squall conditions in the centre of the band.

These are some EXCELLENT snow banks along the highway.

@matthewfeickert Thanks! This was a first serious foray into gingerbread construction. I learned a lot of lessons. Mainly: jello leaks. It looks cool but it’s traitorous.

Enjoying a peaceful Sunday. #fortunate