spring is here, not there

A few weekends back, Kirsten and I managed to get a glimpse of the Botanic Gardens Spring Festival, which nicely coincided with (or, rather, was planned to be at the same time as) the blooming of the garden's tulips, a rather colorful display.




As part of the festival, the garden's observatory cut admission. Unfortunately, we weren't in time to catch a show detailing the stars of the Southern Hemisphere (there's no big dipper here!) but we were in time to check out the observatory's antique telescope, which was built in the 1800s.
The telescope was aimed at the sun - not the main lens, but two smaller lenses were filtered to give a look. One filter revealed simply a large white disk. The other filter turned the sun's rays red, and after a brief interval for my eyes to adjust, I could see flares off the main body, as well as a pair of sun spots. (There's a subtle irony in there somewhere, as the sun has been obscured by clouds during about 90 percent of the daylight hours since I've been in Wellington .)