Sunday, November 11, 2007

Comet Holmes


If you haven't seen it yet, get out to see Comet Holmes tonight. The image above will help you find it if you know Cassiopeia, or you can check out this larger sky chart here to orient yourself with the horizon and more stars.
A comet's tail trails off away from the sun, blown by the solar wind - it has nothing to do with the direction the comet is moving - (see this animation to understand better). Our present comet/Earth/Sun alignment gives us a rare "head-on" view (a fuzzy circle), rather than the more familiar side view (the tail is behind the fuzzy spot we're seeing).

The excerpt below comes from this Sky and Telescope article...

...
T
he comet remains as bright as ever to the naked eye, though its average surface brightness continues to drop as it enlarges. As of last night it was 14 arcminutes wide, or nearly ¼° — half the apparent diameter of the Moon. During this dark-of-the-Moon period (which will end around November 15th), seize whatever chance the weather allows to show family, friends, and strangers something memorable. This is how new amateur astronomers are born.

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Recent Atmospheric Optics: Glories and Sundogs!


On our approach to the Denver airport 2 weeks ago, Mr. Patrick and I were treated to an interesting optical effect called a "glory", and we've posted a video of it on Youtube.
You can read about how the glory forms here

While enjoying a few days on the road during this past week, I got these shots of some nice sundogs over the Long Island Sound:
http://www.stevekluge.com/geoscience/images/sunsetsundogs2.jpg and a wider view here:
http://www.stevekluge.com/geoscience/images/rockynecksunset2.jpg

Sundogs are about 22 degrees (two fists or one outspread hand) on either side of the sun.

You can read about how sundogs form at Les Cowley's atmospheric optics page:
http://www.atoptics.co.uk/halo/parhelia.htm

Monday, October 22, 2007

Santa Ana Winds and Wildfires in California



You've probably read or heard about the wildfires in California (if not, read this). The fires are being fanned by the hot, dry, "Santa Ana Winds" that come down off of the mountains east of the coast. As the already dry air descends, it is compressed and its temperature rises. Read about the Santa Ana Winds here and here is a great site that tells a little about the winds and has some great animations of how the winds grow and strengthen. A little complicated, maybe, but really interesting. Here are some links to maps that show the pressure system responsible:
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sfc_con_pres.html

http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/wx/cwp/prods/current/sfcslp/sfcslp_N.gif

http://www.weatherimages.org/data/imag125.html (this one surprised me....look at the gradients in Montana and northern Mexico. It's got a map of the wind field, too, but it's a little hard to read.)

http://www.atmo.arizona.edu/gifs/US_W.GIF

http://coolwx.com/usstats/presstats.php

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Earth Science Picture of the Day?

The amazing clouds that filled the Hudson Valley on Tuesday, 10/9/2007 are a potential "Earth Science Picture of the Day" submission, and this MetAR helps explain what was going on. If any of you are interested in authoring a description/explanation of the phenomenon, see me and I'll help you polish and submit it. Email me now, or see me Monday if you want to go for it. -Kloog

Thursday, October 11, 2007

A Few Pics from the Catskill Geology Trip


We had quite a wet trip this past week, but everyone survived and actually learned a little geology too. See some more pics from the trip here.

Friday, October 5, 2007

Lake Boils as Volcano Awakes


From the article:
"Hundreds of Indonesians have begun evacuating the slopes of a rumbling volcano in East Java following increased levels of toxic fumes and tremors, a local rescue official said on Thursday."

Kelut Volcano information and location in Google Earth

video of lake bubbling with CO2

Thursday, October 4, 2007

California Landslide!

From this news article:

"The city began noticing cracks on Soledad Mountain Road in July and water and gas main breaks in August. A water line in the neighborhood was replaced with an above-ground pipeline in September to avert damage from the moving earth"

Read the rest of the article by clicking the link above, see some video here, and get it in Google Earth here