Why click?

One of the things on my home page is Space.com, and if you pause your cursor arrow over a line of text, the first few words of the article will appear.

Just a few minutes ago, I saw this: How big is Venus?

I already had a good idea of the answer, but I was curious what they'd say.

When I "moused over", this appeared: Venus is slightly smaller than Earth.

And really, what else would I need to know?  It's not like I'm planning to move there.

Pet peeves

I was thinking about this subject recently, and it could be that you can learn something about a person by knowing what really annoys them. Now, I realize I might be “stepping on the toes” of some readers, but I decided this just might be blog worthy. So please take no offense if your mileage varies, as they say. At least I spared you my rant about planned obsolescence (for now). These aren’t ranked, just written down in the order I thought of them; and I'm sure this list isn't complete. Anyway, here's a few of...


Bob’s Pet Peeves


Having sleeves or pant legs turn inside out when I take them off.

I don’t know why this bugs me – and it doesn’t happen often - but I’ll go to great lengths and even risk a fall to shake my legs out of my pants when the pant legs start trying to turn inside out. It even bothers me a bit to find pants or jeans turned inside out like that in the laundry.


“Are you a dog person or a cat person”?

Hey, I’m friendly with other people’s cats, though I wouldn’t have one. I do like dogs, and I get it about the love and affection. But, I’m a bird person! I don’t like it that somehow our choices of pets seem to have been narrowed to only two.

I’ve had a total of six parakeets over the years. One could say just a few words and three were good talkers, but they all brought a whole lot of cheerfulness to the home. It seems that fewer people keep birds now than in years past, and it’s a shame. They’re missing out.


“Mother nature”.

Give me a break. If you’re an athiest, don’t personalize natural laws. If you’re a Christian, give glory to God and His works. There is no goddess.


“What’s your sign”?

I don’t hear this much anymore, but in the past when asked, my reply was “Don’t Even Think About Parking Here”. I’m a Christian, and I’ve studied and enjoyed astronomy. So don’t even get me started on that astrology nonsense. If you happen to find out when my birthday is, well you did, that’s all. If you want to make something of it, I’m not playing that game.


“The weatherman never gets the forecast right. Why, I shoveled three inches of partly cloudy this morning”!

They’re not always right, but weather forecasts are a whole lot more accurate now than they were 30 years ago. Give them some credit, okay?


Hats or caps with the label “one size fits all”.

What an immense, dastardly lie, they all cut off at about size 7-1/2 at most. I wish I had more hats to wear, but I need at least a 7-7/8 or size 8, and they’re very, very difficult to find.


Chocloate Easter bunnies, or cookies with cute faces on them.

Hey, just give me a plain cookie or a chocolate bar and spare me the twisted comments about “You bit his ears off first”.


Going to a pizza party where all the choices are some kind of “meat lovers” or “combo” or “supreme”.

You know the kind, with the flesh of several assorted beasts and every oddball vegetable under the sun (olives...shudder), including the latest variety of tongue searing pepper. (Also mushrooms...shudder.) Is it too much to ask that there be maybe one simple Canadian bacon or an even simpler cheese pizza? Apparently, sometimes, it is too much to ask.

By the way, what is a pepperoni anyway? Judging by its cross section, it’s some kind of round or tubular critter. I get this mental image of several cute little furry pepperoni, happily bounding through the meadow on a sunny spring day...while stealthy hunters approach with their clubs.

The poor little innocent things.

So readers...what are your pet peeves? Curious minds want to know.

Astronomy stuff, part 2: What's on Earth tonight?

This isn't what I'd planned to post for my second installment in the Astronomy stuff series, but I just came across this and I couldn't resist.

It has stars! It's a map! It ties into pop culture! It involves broadcasting! I suppose you could ask for more, but how much do you want in one place?


This is from a site I just discovered, called Strange Maps. If you go here, you'll see the image along with some comments below. As a couple of people noted, the power of TV broadcasts shrinks to next to nothing beyond our solar system. It might be possible to pick up one of our broadcasts on a planet around another star, but it would be exceedingly difficult and require Much patience.

Sure an interesting idea and a neat image, though.

Hey Mike, it might be fun to come up with a version based on the dates of famous baseball highlights.

Astronomy stuff, part 1: 150 years ago today

This probably didn't make the news most places, but today marks the 150th anniversary of the Carrington event, the most massive solar flare and coronal mass ejection in recorded history. Not only was the sunlight noticably brighter for a short time, but later when the charged particles reached the earth's magnetic field, the northern lights were brighter than anyone could remember, and seen as far south as Cuba.

Space.com posted an article on the anniversary today, but I chose to dig and find some other articles that had impressed me when I came across them months ago.

An article on nasa.gov from October 23, 2003 explains what happened. Some excerpts:

"...the Sun released a mammoth solar flare. For almost an entire minute the amount of sunlight the Sun produced at the region of the flare actually doubled. With the flare came this explosive release of a massive cloud of magnetically charged plasma called a coronal mass ejection...Not all coronal mass ejections head toward Earth. Those that do usually take three to four days to get here. This one took all of 17 hours and 40 minutes,"

"Not only was this coronal mass ejection an extremely fast mover, the magnetic fields contained within it were extremely intense and in direct opposition with Earth's magnetic fields. That meant the coronal mass ejection of September 1, 1859, overwhelmed Earth's own magnetic field, allowing charged particles to penetrate into Earth's upper atmosphere."

Translation: we got slammed. The article goes on to speculate what would happen if such a "perfect solar storm" were to happen today; damage to satellites, interruption in communications worldwide, etc. Back then, the cutting edge electronic technology was the telegraph. The strong aurora induced currents in telegraph lines in the US and in Europe, causing sparks to fly and setting some fires. The induced currents wreaked havoc with the battery supplied current in the wires, and made it difficult to impossible for the telegraph operators to handle traffic. This exchange between two telegraph operators was recorded for posterity; I pulled the quote from the Wikipedia entry. They tried the obvious solution...

Boston operator (to Portland operator): "Please cut off your battery [power source] entirely for fifteen minutes."
Portland operator: "Will do so. It is now disconnected."
Boston: "Mine is disconnected, and we are working with the auroral current. How do you receive my writing?"
Portland: "Better than with our batteries on. - Current comes and goes gradually."
Boston: "My current is very strong at times, and we can work better without the batteries, as the aurora seems to neutralize and augment our batteries alternately, making current too strong at times for our relay magnets. Suppose we work without batteries while we are affected by this trouble."
Portland: "Very well. Shall I go ahead with business?"
Boston: "Yes. Go ahead."

According to the Boston Traveler, they continued without battery power for about two hours.

The aurora were bright enough that there were reports of people being able to read watches and reasonably large type at 1 a.m., and there were instances of fire departments being called out to investigate what appeared to be red flames on the horizon.

A web site called solarstorms.org has a fascinating list of newspaper entries. It's interesting to see the range of emotions...

from the factual:

…Large print could no doubt have been easily read, for we can testify that the time on the face of a watch was easily legible…[Washington Daily National Intelligencer, September 3, 1859].

to amazement (again a reference to telegraph difficulties):

…Never in my experience of fifteen years in working telegraph lines have I witnessed anything like the extraordinary effect of the Aurora Borealis between Quebec and Farther Point last night. The line was in most perfect order, and well skilled operators worked incessantly from 8 o'clock last evening till 1 this morning...and at the latter hour so completely were the wires under the influence of the Aurora Borealis that it was found utterly impossible to communicate between the telegraph stations...{Rochester Union & Advertizer, Tuesday Evening August

to alarm:

…Half-past eleven. The appearance now is positively awful. The red glare is over houses, streets, and fields, and the most dreadful of conflagrations could not cast a deeper hue abroad…[San Francisco Herald, September 5, 1859].

and to the poetic:

The Aurora Borealis : The Brilliant Display on Sunday Night, The present generation have listened with wonder and admiration to the stories their fathers and mothers have told them of auroras and meteors. They have opened their ears and mouths and eyes as they heard of stars falling from the heavens like rain, of the sky at night becoming read as with blood...Few have had the opportunities of witnessing these sublime displays; but on Sunday night the heavens were arrayed in a drapery more gorgeous than they have been for years…Many imagined they heard rushing sounds as if Aeolus had let loose winds…[The New York Times, ]

I've studied enough astronomy to have a basic knowledge of the northern lights, but I can only try to imagine what people - worldwide - experienced 150 years ago tonight.

The Lesser Light To Rule The Night

Not only was February 20th the evening of a total lunar eclipse, it also happened to be my mother's birthday. My family and I went to her house for a quiet celebration of lemon cake, vanilla ice cream, and pleasant conversation. We joked a bit about how we got mom an eclipse for her day. After a while we got curious enough to look out of the appropriate window to see how things were progressing. Since it was an early evening celebration, we didn't see much until we left for home.

The above picture was taken before totality, with the moon mostly in the earth's shadow. This was taken from my front yard looking east, with my digital camera on a tripod. My original plan was to take a few exposures at 15 minute intervals, but the bone chilling cold changed my mind. If it was above 10 degrees, it wasn't by much.

My digital camera wasn't designed with astrophotography in mind, so this was an experiment. The results were pretty much what I expected...not great, but okay considering what I had to work with.