By Jove I can see Uranus

Not a great photo but not too bad for a snap from the back garden. I did not use a telescope, just my camera on maximum zoom (x12).

At the top is Jupiter with three of it's moons. Left to right they are Eurpoa, Io and Ganymede. At the bottom is Uranus which is 2.9 billion kilometres away (it takes light over 2 ½ hours to reach earth). I could see Jupiter clearly with the naked eye and the moons with binoculars but I needed the camera to see Uranus. I used a 3 second exposure.

Birdlings Flat

Went out to Birdlings Flat today to collect some more stones for the garden. The waves are always wild here.

Rebate

Here I am routing out the rebate for the back panel. 

Another New Project

My latest project is a mission style bookcase. I am making it from Tasmanian oak. Here is the bottom of one of the side panels. This is a big project which will take me some time. 

Fault Line

A couple of big shakes over the past couple of nights but things are quietening down somewhat. I love this photo from GeoNet. It shows the fault line running from left to right across the middle of the photo. Before the quake the line of trees was straight.

Wobbly

It is hard to imagine how much the ground must have shifted to cause this kind of damage to a steel bridge.

James suggested that he knew who could fix it. "Who?" I asked. "Superman" he answered.

Bridge

This foot bridge across the Avon has been badly twisted. The bridge has barriers across it to stop people walking on it. They don't seem very effective as we saw several people risking it. I reckon this will be a magnet to young kids. Imagine taking a skate board across that. To be honest if Tracy and James weren't with me I would have had a run across.

A Closer Look

Pathway

This pathway was torn apart. Unfortunately this kind of thing has happened to the ground beneath a lot of houses.

Geology Lesson

The news is full of articles on how to help children traumatised by the earthquake. Fortunately James has handled the whole thing very well. He can tell you all about plate tectonics and how they rub against each other and make the Earth shake.

Cracks

This morning we went for a drive along the River Avon. All along the river banks there are large cracks in the ground.

Restoration?

Chip Shop on Barbadoes St

In the last week we have experirenced over 350 earthquakes, 90 with a magnitude greater than 4 and 12 of them over magnitude 5. Several times a day the house shakes.

The aftershocks have become so commonplace that people are now playing a game. After a shock comes through everyone guesses at the magnitude. About 10 minutes later the report appears on GeoNet. Closest to the actual magnitude wins. I first noticed Tracy and Sandra playing this at home but it seems to have spread through every office in Christchurch.

Fortunately, the frequency and size of the aftershocks does seem to be decreasing and life is returning to normal. Our water no longer needs boiling and the cordon around the city centre was relaxed today.

More aftershocks.

Last night there were several large aftershocks and this morning we were shook by a big one. It was only 5.1 but was very shallow and made the whole city shake. Tracy was going to return to work but the polytech needs to be reassessed after this latest quake.

There is a great map of the quake and the aftershocks at http://www.christchurchquakemap.co.nz

Update

The city centre is under a state of emergency and only authorised people are allowed in. Some suburbs have been hit very hard and I know several people who have lost their homes. It is estimated that up to 20% of houses will have to be rebuilt.

In our area things are getting back to normal. The shops are open though the corner shops in the picture below had to be demolished. Power and water are back but we still have to boil drinking water for three minutes. I am back at work and Tracy should be going in tomorrow.

There have been over 100 aftershocks since the big quake and this has people a bit jumpy. I am very tired from being woken repeatedly during the night. Some of the older buildings in the city centre have been further damaged by the aftershocks and will have to be demolished.

Everyone is amazed that no one was killed. The earthquake in Haiti earlier this year was smaller than the one we experienced and over 100,000 people were killed. We were lucky, the quake struck early in the morning when most people where in bed. If it had happened during the day many people in the city centre would have been killed by falling debris. The other thing that saved us was our low density wooden homes.

James has been brilliant during this, he now knows all about how earthquakes happen and will explain it to anyone who will listen. Aftershocks don't bother him, if he even mentions them at all it is to say 'That was a big one, eh!

Van

This van on Rugby St was caught by the bricks falling from the nearby church.

Chip Shop

Tracy's dad used to get his fish and chips here.

Road

There are some large cracks in Edgeware Rd.

Edgeware Church

It seems that brick buildings fared very badly. I am so glad that I live in a one storey wooden house. Wood bends, bricks crumble.

Power Pole

A power pole crashed through the fence on the corner of Massey Crescent.

Liquefaction

The new buzz word is liquefaction. This is the phenomena where sandy wet ground turns to liquid during an earthquake. The liquid mud had bubbled up to the surface all over town. In some of the eastern suburbs the mud has destroyed houses.

Bedroom

Sat on the corner was the bewildered occupant of this apartment. I think it is amazing he survived.

Corner Shops

The shops on the corner of Westminster and Cranford St looked like they had been hit by a bomb.

Chimney

Most of the neighbours have lost their chimneys or they were badly damaged. In some cases the chimneys had landed on cars.

Amazingly no one was killed in this quake and there were only two serious injuries.One of these was caused by a falling chimney.

Wall

After lying in bed for a couple of hours James and I actually managed to get some sleep but I don't think Tracy got any though. At least we got a call from her folks so we knew they were OK

They drove over in the morning and brought a portable barbecue. Power was still out and so was the water. Our outside tap was working so we were able to have a cup of tea.

Amazingly our house appears to have come through unscathed. A few vases and glasses had fallen from shelves but only an empty bottle and a couple of light bulbs were broken. We will have to get the chimney checked at some point but it looks fine.

After breakfast, we all went for a walk around the neighbourhood to see how things were. It was a lovely warm, sunny, spring morning. It was very surreal after the events of the night before.

A Night to Remember

This morning at 4.35 Canterbury was hit by a series of earthquakes. The first shock was a 5.4 magnitude quake which woke me and 5 seconds later the main quake hit with a magnitude of 7.1. The noise was deafening and our house began shaking rapidly side to side.

I shouted for everyone to 'get under the bed'. James was sleeping next to me so I grabbed him and pushed him under. When he complained I just said 'earthquake' a couple of times and he settled down.

The main quake lasted for about a minute during which the power went out. After a while we retreated to the kitchen and hid under the table. That didn't feel secure enough so we pulled the hall table into the centre of the hallway and sheltered underneath with a camp light. When I made the table I never dreamed I would end up using it as an earthquake shelter. Funny that it is a 'Shaker' table.

At this point we had no idea what was happening. We knew there had been a large earthquake but didn't know where or how big. I was concerned that this might be the 'big one' and about the possibility of a tsunami (though I didn't mention this to Tracy!). We could not get service on our mobiles but we listened to the radio on Tracy's MP3 player. The initial reports were that the epicentre was about 20km inland from us so a tsunami was unlikely. We spent about an hour under the table listening to the radio as a series of aftershocks passed through. Some of these were quick, violent ones that shook the house and some were long slow rolling motions. It felt like being on a plane flying through turbulence.

Eventually we decided to go back to bed. The aftershocks were still coming but nothing like that first one. Looking out of the living room window everything was so quiet and still. All the power was out and the milky way stretched across the sky. It was actually quite peaceful. I think the adrenalin was wearing off.