@RogerBW @phooky @futurebird Funeral trains were a thing in Sydney in the late 19th and early 20th centuries too. The very gothic Mortuary Station, a.k.a. Necropolis Receiving Station, is still there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regent_Street_railway_station
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spacelizard@aus.social
@spacelizard@aus.social
A forum for discussing and organizing recreational softball and baseball games and leagues in the greater Halifax area.
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There is something about an empty train “not in service” passing at “minimum station speed” that is elegant, and grim. -
Macquarie University's Huntsman Telescope (https://huntsman.space) has been knocked out by ants.We named the telescope after the iconic huntsman spiders, which are abundant at Siding Spring Observatory, including inside the various telescope buildings. Perhaps the ants took offence that we chose to honour other arthropods and not them.
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Macquarie University's Huntsman Telescope (https://huntsman.space) has been knocked out by ants.Macquarie University's Huntsman Telescope (https://huntsman.space) has been knocked out by ants. Again.
The ants find their way into the electrical power distribution cabinet outside the telescope dome in large numbers, cause short circuits that trip the circuit breakers, and often get inside the breakers too, ruining them.
This happened in January 2018, December 2018, November 2019, December 2019 (took out several telescopes by tripping upstream breakers), February 2020, and now.
After the first few times this happened we looked into whether this was a common problem, and found that anecdotally some species of ants do seem to be attracted to electrical equipment (to the detriment of both the ants and the equipment) but there seemed to be no agreement as to why. Any thoughts on this, @futurebird?
Here are some slides from a conference talk I gave in December 2019, between the 3rd and 4th incident.