The day started with me and a PhD student going to the observatory
to collect water samples and test them for the amount of phytoplankton by analysing the florescence of the sample. This sampling has been done every day for the last 20 years by various researchers at the IUI.
While on the way to collect this sample we saw the manager of the observatory digging in a pile of sand in the middle of the turtle enclosure and after the sampling we bumped into him and he showed us the baby turtle he had found amongst the already hatched eggs under all the sand. Unfortunately it was too early in the morning for me to think of taking a picture.
Like I said before, it was a quiet day at work not because nothing happened but because only a small number of us were there.
Today was Tisha B'Av (the ninth day of the hebrew month of Av). On this day people are given the option to stay home as today is a day of fasting.
This day commemorates the destruction of the holy temples in Jerusalem. The first was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC before the Jewish people of Jerusalem where enslaved in Babylonia.
They returned to Jerusalem and constructed a second temple on the sight of the first in 516 BC. The second temple was destroyed in 70 AD during the Roman siege of Jerusalem.
All that remains of the two temples is a wall in old Jerusalem.
The destruction of both these temples occured on the ninth of Av which is why this day was declared Tisha B'Av.
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