Starship Asterisk*

beyond wrote:

rstevenson wrote:Alas, we were (and still are) having a Nor'easter. The whole universe could be eclipsed and I wouldn't know it.

Rob

Rob -- You are IN your own Eclipse Enjoy it while you can. It won't be long before you are out of it and have to grab a snow shovel

My best shot from last night, during totality, showing a strange crater in the middle... Rob

Hey Rob, if you took a series of bites from a Donut and photograped them, you could then call it - "The human eclipsing of a Toroid".
If nothing else----it would be satisfying

Today I saw a snowflake in the sky! Oh My Gosh a lot of snowflakes. Actually; we were lucky; only about a half an inch of snow fell.

Yay, Orin! We are forecast to have a little snow coming our way; this could have been a significant storm for us if the track had been a bit different. But it isn't, so we are dodging it and will have perhaps an inch or two to make things pretty, but not so much that people are skiing to get to the grocery store.

Tonight (or rather, at this point, last night) I saw a beautiful crescent moon smiling at me from the western sky.

rstevenson wrote:

beyond wrote:

rstevenson wrote:Alas, we were (and still are) having a Nor'easter. The whole universe could be eclipsed and I wouldn't know it.

Rob

Rob -- You are IN your own Eclipse Enjoy it while you can. It won't be long before you are out of it and have to grab a snow shovel

My best shot from last night, during totality, showing a strange crater in the middle...

donut-eclipse-2010.jpg

Rob

Awesome!!!!

I guess the Moon really is made of cheese... what these guys hid from us!!!!



Ann

After a couple and a half weeks without riding, I got in a bike ride last night; when I got home, the skies had cleared a bit and the Big Dipper was over my driveway. Wasn't much, but I was glad to see it!

I can`t to be jealous because some dark clouds accumulates over my house. Meteo heralds that some Viktor is going near my location (?); possible is whirlwind that I see nothing more than darkness. Second "cyclone" in seven days. Hard to believe.

Last night: clouds! rain! lightning! It was a stupendous but brief storm. I suspect tonight will be more of the same.

The ISS! I went out to the roof to do some binocular observing, immediately saw a bright (-3) star but cataloged it as an airplane, and didn't realize until a couple minutes later what it was, when it came into my field of view. I watched it go into Earth shadow over Kentucky, 1150km away!
Nice to be in the right place at the right time, for once.
--
Sam

Hey sam, now that you have accomplished being in the right place at the right time-once, try for twice.

Last night I saw noctilucent clouds! Not a lot of them, just a bit near the horizon. But their pearly blue-white shimmer is unmistakable. I shouldn't be happy, because they say that noctilucent clouds are bad for the ozone layer, but I can't help smiling because they are so beautiful.
Photo: Patrick Cobb.

"My" noctilucent clouds looked a bit like these, except that "mine" were closer to the horizon, and the sky above them wasn't nearly this dark. Instead, the northern sky was about these colors.

Capella was above the noctilucent clouds. When I see such clouds, Capella is always either above them or sitting right inside them. Yesterday night Capella was well above them. It was brilliantly bright and twinkling like mad. It seemed quite yellowish against the dark blue sky, so it looked a bit like a yellow Sirius. Higher in the sky and farther to the right (east), Mirfak, alpha Persei, was shining through quite faintly. Still higher and farther to the right, the majestic W of queen Cassiopeia decorated the sky.

Ann

Noctilucent clouds are composed of water ice in the mesosphere, most likely from rocket exhaust (burning of liquid hydrogen and oxygen). How this is bad for the ozone layer escapes me.

bystander wrote:Noctilucent clouds are composed of water ice in the mesosphere, most likely from rocket exhaust (burning of liquid hydrogen and oxygen). How this is bad for the ozone layer escapes me.

While rocket exhaust can produce noctilucent clouds, they are usually a natural phenomenon. Rockets damage the ozone layer; perhaps that's where the confusion is coming from.

The "negative" aspect of noctilucent clouds is that their increasing frequency may well be tied to global warming, which has lowered the temperature of the upper atmosphere and altered the nature and amount of gases. In this sense, noctilucent clouds themselves are not harmful, but are indicators of an underlying harmful condition.

Last night I saw clouds and record rainfall

Clouds! Rain! Rain! Rain! And lot of lightning! It was a very fast-moving storm, taking about 12 hours to get from Chicago to the DC area.

Still cloudy out there.

That's all I saw.

Ahem. I saw:
Northern Lights
Milky Way
Lightning
Perseids
AT THE SAME TIME
From an observation tower in central Minnesota
while listening to mysterious creatures munching 100 feet below.
Pretty sure I also heard an owl.
So happy.

: gnashes teeth with envy :
: weeps into her tea :

owlice wrote:: gnashes teeth with envy :
: weeps into her tea :

You should have used your miles

owlice wrote:: gnashes teeth with envy :
: weeps into her tea :

No! Don't be sad.
You rather inspired me: if Owlice can fly to Edmonton or such to see it, I can surely drive two hours.

--
Sam

bystander wrote:You should have used your miles

I tried; couldn't do it.

Sam wrote: No! Don't be sad.
You rather inspired me: if Owlice can fly to Edmonton or such to see it, I can surely drive two hours.

Oh, Sam, I'm glad you drove the two hours, and I think it very likely you are, too!

I just need to be somewhere with darker skies.

Alas, despite the sky clearing in the late evening after a dismal cloud cover all day, and despite my attempts to find a dark area to view the aurora, I saw plenty of nuttin'. Well, the usual suspects, the Moon, some stars, even blurry little Andromeda in my 7x50s, but narry a smear of northern lights. They just didn't get this far south, or I couldn't get out from under the urban light decay, one or the other. [sigh]

Years ago, while working in more northerly areas, I almost grew to take for granted the regular flashing and flaming of northern lights across the sky. I saw them so often I was comparing them -- "Oh this one is alright, but remember that one last month? Now that was an aurora!"

Rob

: drinks her salty tea :
: needs more tissues :

looks like our resident owl is showing symptoms of lack of auroras. Perhaps this will help relieve the symptoms until the actual medicine can be seen.
http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/astronomy/ ... efault.asp