Farside Sunspots Gone

Gone again. We’re back to a blank sun:
http://www.spaceweather.com/images2008/02jul08/midi_farside_blank.gif?PHPSESSID=ej3c5k2lq5uvgqg93auejioeb0

It’s the moon, Over

Something that’s being blogged about alot is It’s the Moon, Over.

Basically it is the story about A man in Wales who sees an unidentified bright luminous object in the sky over the mountains, and calls the police about it. The police decide to investigate the mystery and discover that the unidentified object is really just the moon. Darn! I was hoping they’d get down there and see, you know, an alien spaceship. <sarcasm> what did they think it was?! Oh well, can’t blame them for doing their job.

But you also cannot ignore the blatent stupidity that started the whole ordeal! A person who cannot identify the moon either has such a hectic life that they can’t associate objects anymore, or they had such a terribly isolated childhood that they never learned what it was. I’m surprised they could call 911 and describe that they saw in English!

But perhaps the person is your normal average everyday Joe. And maybe this is a sign in the deacreasing interest in the skies as Stuart points out in his blog.

A better theory on the Cooler Climate

As I’ve blogged about in the past, this year has been unseasonably cooler. (it seems) Instead of blaming the condition on lack of sunspots, it could potentially be because Earth is at Aphelion. (or maybe it’s the two combined.) Aphelion is when Earth is furthest away from the Sun; Perihelion is when Earth is closest. Unless you’re a second grader, you probably know that this is not what causes the seasons. That is caused by the precession of the Earth – or Earth’s wobble. The hemispheres receive more or less warmth from the sun because they tilt and the light becomes dispersed over those regions (or concentrated when it tilts towards the Sun at the opposing hemisphere).

So if the Earth is at its closest to the Sun, it must not have a perfectly circular orbit, right?  Correct. It makes an ellipse around the sun with the closest distance at 148 million Km and the furthest at 152 Km. Which makes us at the 152 Km presently. If the Apelion lands on winter and Perihelion lands on summer we would have an extra hot winter, and an extra hot summer. However it will supposedly be several thousand years before the two will actually co-incide. For now we have summer co-inciding with the apelion. Which would, as common logic suggests, give us a cooler summer. But this is by no means exact science.

Supposedly the difference between aphelion and perihelion is  only 5% sunlight. Which can be big if one were to calculate the difference in power received in each region.  But I’m simplifying things.

Of course, if the Earth is never the same distance from the sun, how did they come up with an Astronomical Unit(AU)? Well they simply took an average, which turns out to be 149,597,870,691 ± 30m or roughly just 150 million KM. (wikipedia)

Sources:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/07/04/does-the-sun-look-smaller-to-you/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_unit

Earth’s sound track

We now have captured the natural Earth-Generated radiowaves of our upper atmosphere. They’re only available outside our ionosphere and if you ask me they sound peculiarly close to birds in a forest. Or do the birds in the forest sound close to the radiowaves? Eitherway it’s extremely unlikely that either of the two have influence on one another. Since the birds are on earth, there’s no way for them to ever capture those waves… Unless the moon relfected them. But even in that case, how would it be possible for them to convert radio into sound? It’s simply just a coincidence.

The sounds of Saturn’s radio signal are far less familiar, however. They sound more like an alien conversation than anything else, but still cool to listen to.

Planetary

The song Intergalactic by beastie boys may have a different meaning.

The other day I was reading a book about fords written by an old person – someone who was around at the advent of the invention – and the word planetary was used as a verb! Something like “he went planetary”, and I thought to my self “hmmm I guess it’s just some old slang…”

Then I happened to be reading a book about space when I uncovered the root of the word planet. It used to mean wander. In the nighttime sky, the planets were stars like the others except that they wandered. From month to month, year to year, they would be in different locations. They were planetary, they wandered. So the next time you see your bum friend who left home ten years ago, you can ask him if he’s still planetary.