In a rare astronomical encounter, the full moon rose less than 2° away from planet Mars tonight. I took this photo showing the event – I had to overexpose the moon so that Mars would show up. Verna and I looked at this through the binoculars and it was spectacular.
Even though it’s going to be rainy and ugly here for the next couple of days, you might look up at night and see a bright red dot showing through breaks in the clouds. In December, Mars and Earth will pass through the parts of their orbits where the two planets are as close together as they will be this year. Read about the close encounter at Astronomy Picture of the Day.
I found this beautiful picture on SpaceWeather.com last week. Here’s the story about what you’re seeing:
GOLDEN BEACON: The sun was setting in Toronto last week when, suddenly, a golden beacon leaped up from the horizon. “It lasted a good 15 minutes,” reports Damir who took this picture:
The “beacon” is a sun pillar created by plate-shaped ice crystals fluttering down from high cold clouds. Flat sides of the crystals catch the rays of the setting sun and bend them into a tall luminous column as shown. Look for sun pillars when the sun is near the horizon and shining through high clouds–they’re a nice addition to any autumn sunset.
Click on the image for the large, majestic photo. And be sure to visit SpaceWeather.com – you’ll like it.
The Great Crash of November ’07 is where we had two computers die within a few days of each other. First, the laptop stopped working and a couple of nights later, the power supply in my old desktop computer went out. This made me wonder what could be next. My question was answered the night before last when the big 36″ TV croaked with a loud snap and burnt smell right after. I’m not asking about anything else for fear of another self-fulfilling prophecy.
The hard drive in the old laptop started making noises like somebody doing something bad to a cat. It completely died shortly thereafter. I’m going to try and see if there is a way to recover the data from it, but if not, then it’s not going to be a big deal. Last year, I started backing up all our photos and other files to one of those monster external hard drives. We might lose some data, but at least it’s minimized.
The old Dell desktop didn’t lose any data – it just stopped working. I removed the hard disk from it and installed it into another desktop that we use upstairs. The upstairs computer is now downstairs to fill the gap caused by the failure. All of my old files are there although there are some problems activating some of the software I use. Also no biggie.
Moving the computer downstairs was the only the start of our recovery. The next step is shown in the image (click for a large view). The new Dell 1721 Notebook arrived yesterday as an early Christmas Present.
Now to figure out which flat-screen HDTV is going to replace the old smelly CRT-type TV.
Lenticular (lens-shaped) clouds indicate an atmospheric wave condition, where the wind follows an up and down path, often in the downwind side of mountains. Pilots know that this condition and the appearance of lenticular clouds means there is a very high likelihood of moderate to severe to extreme turbulence in the area.
This particular cloud seen here was west of Point Vicente on the California Coast in October after some rain moved through the area. Click on the image for a larger view.
I spotted this prism effect in the cirrus clouds during my after-lunch walk yesterday. It’s probably a fragment of a ‘Circumhorizon Arc,’ which is a chance alignment of ice crystals in the upper-atmosphere. The sun was out of the frame and high in the sky towards the upper-left, more or less at a right angle from the arc.
