As I said in more detail in my last post, we have arranged a performance by Solar Eclipse, on tour for one day only, Asia, Pacific, and the US. However, the situation looks bad for the NENW performance (scheduled for 5:30PM), with extensive cloud cover threatened. And it turned out to be true.
At 4PM it wasn’t looking good
The cloud cover remained until nightfall, and the satellite image wasn’t much help.
At 6:30 all we had was a slight darkening of the southern half of the frame
In honor of Eliza Doolittle Day, Sunday, the 20th of May, we are staging an annular eclipse of the Sun. In the NENW it will start about 5:30PM. This description, from the LA Times, is pretty good. Here’s a simulation for Washington State (the full page lists all the states…worth listing)
Easiest setup for viewing is
[–box with white paper…..cardboard with pinhole–|…..O sun
you, looking this way <… o_O
The pinhole projects the image of the sun on the paper. The longer the distance twixt cardboard and paper the bigger, and dimmer, the image.
It's safe, because you are looking towards the box and away from the sun. Don't look at the sun directly, you'll put somebody's eye out.
Back in 1964, RAND scientist Stephen H. Dole wrote a book titled “Habitable Planets for Man“. In it, he made a serious effort to first, define what was needed for a planet to be habitable, and second, to estimate the number of stars that might actually support such planets. Today, we had our first good test of his ideas. (more…)
That’s “After Litha”. The Anglo-Saxons — who spoke Old English (although they probably didn’t call it that) — occupied and ruled Britain from about 449 to 1066. They used a solar/lunar calendar, which does not work well with the passage of the months of the modern calendar (although Bede mapped them that way). Two of their ‘months’ were doubled: Aere Yule/Aefter Yule fell on either side of their Yule festival, sometime around the end of December (or the winter solstice, or Christmas). Aere Litha/Aeftera Litha came six months later, close to the end of June/beginning of July. Since it is likely that the Angles and the Saxons and the Jutes (oh, my) started a month at the first crescent of the new moon, this year we might expect Aeftera Litha to begin on the 1st or 2d of July. Just in case you were wondering, next month, August, is Wéodmónaþ, or Weed Month. Since the seasons of England are much like those of the coastal NorthWest, all of my Portland reader can take comfort in knowing that others have had the same problems.
Anglo-Saxon history is a topic for another post, but I’ll just note that you can get an idea of the scale of their achievement by adding a thousand years to an A-S date, to map it into more modern history. So they arrived in England at the invite of Vortigern in 449 (->1449 almost fifty years before Columbus) and were destroyed in the Battle of Hastings in 1066 (->2066, over fifty years from now). This country has a way to go before we better their record.
Having just gotten on an add pictures jag (thanks Kurt), I decided to test if, besides being aesthetic, they’d encourage people to read something they might not otherwise. In the best tradition of science, I thought I’d run a quick experiment. My hypothesis, H1, was that people would be entranced by the pretty pictures, and click on the link while in a trance state. My null hypothesis, H0, was that it wouldn’t make a difference, since nobody reads this blog anyway, except a few of my friends (Hi Sandy), and HOTD fans.
I decided to use my AAVSO post (scroll down two, past Three Wolves). I originally put it up on March 24th, and over the course of the next week it got exactly two views. Should be really easy to measure growth from that baseline. So I found the picture that went with the blog post that inspired me, and updated the article to include it on the main page, right above the “Read the rest of this entry” link. Then I sat back to let the data roll in.
Result one week later: two more views. No change.
Now, no change is the assumed state of the world. Most things we do don’t really change the world, not even within our own restricted circle. If we are to accept a hypothesis as coming from a good model, we have to demonstrate that our action made a difference. In this case, it didn’t, at least, not within the parameters of our experiment. I am reminded of two aphorisms from my youth:
1. Intelligence is our last defense against wishful thinking. Replace Intelligence with Statistics and you have something applicable to the wider world. In passing, I would note that Intelligence is capitalized for more reasons than just starting a sentence. I am talking about the formal discipline.
2. How badly you want something to be true has absolutely no impact on whether it is true or not. You build your model, you draw your hypothesis, you run your test. The universe tells you if you got it right.
Google and I, we don’t either of us have a source for the above quotes.
The American Association of Variable Star Observers hit the 20 million observations mark last month.
As an active observer between 1980 and 2000, I am immensely proud of this organization. (more…)
Or not. Depending on which rule you use. You see, according to the latest reinterpretation, most seasons have only three full moons (early, mid, and late). This will be the third full moon of four this Autumn, and so is called a ‘blue moon’ so that the fourth and last full moon of Autumn this year (which beats Winter in the door by 15 hours) can still be called the Late Autumn Moon.
So far, all the sources and commentaries appear to be based on 20th Century US sources (yes, they claim ancient monastic traditions, but, as the reporters for the Anlgo-Saxon Chronicle used to say: Vellum, or it never happened).
Not the game, the real thing. Full moon at Autumnal Equinox. Here is a writeup. It’s tonight, Wednesday, so get out there and look. Note that we are only a couple nights past the closest approach of Jupiter to Earth in about 40 years, so that bright star next to the moon is pretty much as big as it gets.
In the modern recreation of our supposed Celtic past (and who doesn’t yearn to be Irish?) this is the festival called Mabon, and for the Japanese, it is しゅうぶんのひ. In the Anglo-Saxon lunar calendar, this full moon would probably signal the boundary between Wéodmónaþ (weed month) and Háligmónaþ (holy month)*.
We haven’t had a hummer at the feeder for a full week now, so I guess it’s time to bring them in.
*This is a correction, I was at the wrong month boundary.
Thursday, 27 August, 2009, will be a first quarter, or waxing moon. As seen from Earth, it’s a half moon, and thereby hangs a tale.
When you look at a half moon, one that looks like this: D , you are looking at the sunrise line, or terminator. Yes, you can see the terminator if you look at a crescent moon, or a gibbous moon, but it’s only when you are directly over the sunrise line that you see that kind of a half moon. When you look at the moon at your local sunset (about 19:40 PDT, these days), you are standing on the sunset line of the Earth, also called the terminator. If you think about it, the only way this can happen is if the moon is directly behind the Earth in its orbit around the Sun. Go do a drawing. you have the moon and the Earth in line, like this: o O –> with the arrow indicating the movement of the Earth in its orbit. To complete the picture, the Sun would be off the top of the page, and the bottom half of those circles would be dark.
Now, the Earth travels about 29.6km/sec in its orbit around the sun. And the moon, on average, is 382,500 from the Earth. (Bear with me here, the math is almost over). So, the Earth covers the Earth-Moon distance in about 3.5hours.
That means that when you look at a First Quarter Moon, at sunset, you are looking at the very spot in space that the Earth was at, 3.5 hours ago. In the morning, should you be up early enough to see a Last Quarter Moon at local sunrise, you will be looking at the very spot in space where the Earth will be about the time you sit down for your pre-luncheon snack.
Go out tomorrow evening and try it.
