I loved the power outage…

Vicky

As an avid amateur astronomer I was a bit miffed at the timing of the greatest of great power outages. It was just slightly past full moon and that is not a time astronomers observe. Hopefully next time it will be timed with new moon and we will all be able to see the milky way in all its glory and may just maybe we will be able to see gegenschein.

Grant

Next time?! Wash your mouth out!!! 🙂

Grant, have you had any success viewing Mars during its close approach? The light pollution here is so awful that it’s hardly worth my lugging out my old reflector to take a peek…

🙁

Chuck

Chuck

One of the unfortunate twist of nature is that when mars is closest it is at the lowest point in the heavens as seen from the northern hemisphere and hence we have to observe it through masses of turbulent air. Now our friends in Australia and points south do have a spectacular view of mars … lucky sausages.

Grant

Grant, here at 30 degrees latitude it’s pretty well up from the horizon; will look for an opportunity to head out into the countryside in the next few weeks with the moon waning.

Chuck

Grant, I know, the moon was terrible. I’ll make sure to put my order in for the next one. 😉

<http://www.cojoweb.com/earthlights.html>

Jane,

Taking this image in to PSE and lightening brings out detail not evident in the web photo, especially in the Oceans. Change to RGB mode and an get some interesting colors too.

Pete

Hi Pete :pbpt:

Hi Pete, Wow! That is really neat! I never really played with the image before, but you can see the ocean and some islands that weren’t visible before.
I have a NASA site that you would love, I will see if I can find it. Lots of really neat stuff, I sometimes copy them to use for desktop patterns and stuff. <http://www.pbase.com/image/13899566>
Here is an example.
Found the link, had to go back to Netscape for it,,,,
<http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/>
Fun stuff.
Jane

Well, Andrew, I read an article in the paper about that a couple of days ago. They say that’s just a bunch of fiction!! Statistical analysis of the birth rates of some major hospitals in the U. S. don’t substantiate the claim of increased births nine months after major "thing" like this. Of course, statisticians can get numbers to say anything they want. My co-workers gave me my favorite sweatshirt several years ago on my birthday: "When all else fails, manipulate the data." Sounds good to me. You want the birthrate up in nine months? We can do that!