Friday, February 25, 2011
A Halo in the Sky
Walking home I caught this 22° halo around the Sun. These occur when sunlight is refracted through hexagonal ice crystal high in the atmosphere. It is one of the commonest sky phenomena there is. I've seen quite a few around the Moon, but this is only the second I've seen around the Sun.There is also a tangent arc, which is my first one of them. Just shows what happens when you keep your eyes open.
Here is a few images I've made of halos around the Moon.
Labels: Halo, rainbows, sky phenomena
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Storm City
I've just come back from the Australian Health and Medical Research Congress. Being in the middle of exam time, this was a quick fly-in-flyout thing (sorry John), then I spent the bulk of the weekend marking exams.But I did get to experience the storms that hit Brisbane (see more pictures here), Adelaide storms are very wimpy things, and I hadn't had a good storm for a long time. The Wednesday storm came right over Mum's house, and it was fantastic to smell the approaching rain, and watch the lightning arc across the sky.
At one stage Mum came out and I thought she was going to ask me to come in, but she said "Turn the lights on son, that way you can see the hail better".Naturally I got no photos of the storm, or of the Venus - Sagittarius conjunction (because of all the lcoud, of course), so here are some photos I took when the family walked downm to the Kiosk for fish and chips. At least its a starfish, and the wired patters the drifting sand made over the hard san were pretty amazing.
Labels: miscelaneous, sky phenomena
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Don't Forget the great World Wide Star Count
The Great World Wide Star Count is open until November 3. So far there are only two entries from Australia up. So when you go out to watch the antics of Venus and The Moon over the next few nights, take a moment to look at Sagittarius and report to the star count folks.
Labels: light pollution, sky phenomena
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Join the Great World Wide Star Count
Venus is currently in the head of the Scorpion. On the evenings of the 26th to 28th of November (From Sunday to Tuesday), Venus will be very close to the bright red star Antares, you should be able to see this from 7:30 pm to 9:00 pm local times. Very worthwhile watching (with Jupiter up above the sky is quite attractive).
If you are out and about watching Venus, why not participate in the Great World Wide Star Count?
This is an annual event designed to map light pollution in the skies. All you have to do is match simple charts of stars with the sky to estimate light pollution.
The count is open until November 3, so why not have a go!
If you are out and about watching Venus, why not participate in the Great World Wide Star Count?
This is an annual event designed to map light pollution in the skies. All you have to do is match simple charts of stars with the sky to estimate light pollution.
The count is open until November 3, so why not have a go!
Labels: Observational Astronomy, sky phenomena
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Polaroid Clouds
On the weekend the Bettdecker erschnappenderweisle looked up and said, "those clouds look fantastic through polaroid glasses". And they did. I tired to photograph them with and without a polaroid filter over the lens, but the effect wasn't as dramatic as it was visually. The clouds still look pretty spekky though (click image to enlarge it).Labels: sky phenomena
Friday, June 22, 2007
Morning Rainbow
One of the up sides of the rain *(which is making it hard to document the Venus Saturn encounter), is that we get a lot of rainbows. Here is a beauty that I saw from the kitchen window while making the kids breakfast. A couple of weeks ago, I saw a beauty in the city, a prefect, intense, double rainbow that was floating in front of the buildings. And I didn't have a camera (sigh).*despite all the rain, and the savage storms lashing the east coast, our resivours and rivers are still periolously dry.
Labels: rainbows, sky phenomena, weather
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