This is the Day of Renewal: The Winter Solstice.

December 21st, 2009 Thomasso

It occurred around 9:45am this morning local time, and the darkness was very noticeable, but as the drizzle coated everything wet, spirits were high becuase this is the day of renewal: the winter Solstice. I pay special attention to this day because of its significance as a turning point in the year. I should also point out that I am not a religious person, but a person of reality who looks beyond fiction to see what is really there – and I see the magic of the universe in physics. The Earth has a tilt of 23.5 degrees on a elliptical orbit, with an orbital eccentricity of 0.017, which means that we get four extra days of summer compared to the Southern hemisphere, and our winters are equally shorter. Because of this tilling effect along the celestial equator, we get the seasons.

The significance of today is that from here on in the days will gradually get longer. For us who live in the Northern climates, this is a good thing becuase knowing that the cold and drizzly weather will be gone in about three months makes the hope and happiness of a new beginning something tangible to hold onto while it pours buckets outside, or a dump of snow occurs.

I remember asking my father why, if winter started on December 21, how come winter didn’t start when the days actually started getting shorter instead of now when the cycle was half over? He was unable to actuality answer this question, but he gave it a shot.  He said, “Bureaucracy – when they were hashing out the calendar and fitting in all the days and months, trying to make everyone happy, other countries were getting cold weather later than the countries closer to the equator, so they compromised.” he said. For a very long time I bought that story. I was corrected in my beliefs during a high school science lesson on time and the seasons, when the teacher used a fancy model of the Solar System with a light bulb for the Sun that showed physically what was going on. Seeing the process in a model made the difference in fully understanding what was going on and how it all worked.

Of course, the reason for winter starting on the solstice is something called seasonal drag. Two things happen when the Earth tilts away from the Sun. First, the rays from the Sun slowly start to cover more surface area of the Earth, and as a result the energy is spread out wider on the ground. Second, it takes time for the atmosphere and surface temperatures to cool down as the heat is retained and releases slowly. So the really cold days do not start until the days start getting longer. The great news is, March is not that far away!

Happy Solstice! The days are getting longer!

Posted in Astronomy, Events, General | Comments Off

Overcoming Fear and Seeing the True Universe for the Very the First Time.

December 18th, 2009 Thomasso

It was sixteen weeks ago that I took up the challenge of doing a hard-based third year science course, the last of my science requirement in my degree program, and back then I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I embarked on Astro Physics. The fourteen week long course took me on some very wild rides as I fumbled with my scientific calculator, and gawked at the streams of formulas with enough Greek letters to make a bowl of soup with, and it made me ponder the true extent of our universe.

Last night I wrote my final for that class. At the end of the 3 hour exam, which I managed to complete before the required time period was up, I got my list of overall marks from the professor. I was elated with joy when she said that my final mark may hinged between a B or an A, depending on the outcome of my final exam. (I was happy that it was not the difference between a C or a B.) I remembered how hard the mid-term was. I squeaked in a borderline B+/A- in the mid-term, after putting a lot of hours repetitiously memorising the 150 pages of texts for that exam. The big blow to the chest was that the final exam was accumulative, meaning that it covered everything from day one till the final moment of the last class. I had to work harder for it!

I remember sitting in the class, dumbfounded, when we were given our Math labs. Physics has a dual whammy with it, in that it deals with theory and Math all in one, and they are inter twined. You can not happily wonder through the course with just the theory and not take in any of the Math components–you would never be able to answer any of the questions, or get full marks for them. So seeing numbers, huge numbers, written in scientific notation like this, scared the pants off me. But once I figured out to enter them into the calculator, and properly understand them, then the wheels started to turn for me.

I was hard on myself. I only saw the people in the class that were getting all of the questions. I did not see that the class mean was only 67 percent, or that a quarter of the class was very close to fail mark of 60 percent, depending on what benchmark you use from what degree program you are in. I made sure that I allowed myself several hours per week going over the notes, textbook and labs.  Disappointment came from the labs becuase of the level of Math that was involved. One lab, I got 7 out of 30 marks becuase of not moving the decimal point far enough to the right when converting measurements when calculating Mass into Solar Units. In another lab I was given only fifty percent becuase my line on the graph was “sketched in” as opposed to a nice thin line drawn in. My graph making skills lacked in the Physics department. On top of that, I saw one student hand in a computer generated graph, and the prof accepted it–”hey I could have done that!”

Oh, I guess I should explain what the four numbers mean eh? Well, the first two are part of the world of Physics known as Physical Constants, the first is the speed of light measured in metres per second, and the next one is the mass, in kilograms, of a electron. The next two are are Astronomical Constants, AU, or Astronomical Unit which equals the distance form the Earth to the Sun in kilometres, and last one is the mass of the Earth in kilograms.

Posted in Astronomy, Criminology, Events, Homework and deadlines, Photographs, University classes | Comments Off

Yes, It’s the Big Day: Halloween Is Here!

October 31st, 2009 Thomasso

It’s going to be a great night for the night of the dead, and all those kiddies, and big kids too, dressed up in costumes who are going to go out on the annual candy feast, the dead better watch out! And don’t let me forget that for the older kids, this is the night when the trick is worth more than the the treat. heh heh heh. The night will be almost perfect. Halloween this year is on a Saturday, so staying up late, parting with no regrets, is almost a certainty.  Also, the moon phase will be almost full, at 95 percent waxing gibbous, at 13 days old. The temperature for tonight in the Fraser Valley will be up to  a warm 12C, which is quite comfortable when wearing a heavy costume.

Added Around 7:30pm:

I walked around town for a few hours mainly to watch the various fireworks shows that were going on, but there was nothing big. There were lots of people walking around though. Only a few were dressed in costumes but mostly the average age group that I saw were the thirty somethings walking to the various house parties. A least they are not driving.

Interestingly I did not see one C.O.P. on the roads? Could it be that we are a well behaved society, or is it the silence before the storm? Stay tuned.

Posted in Astronomy, Events, General, Humour, Photographs | Comments Off

The All Powerful Sun: What is in Time?

September 27th, 2009 Thomasso

We are doing a really nifty lab experiment in physics this week. We are asked to find out how far off we are from the start of our time-zone, and to calculate this by using basic mathematical formulas by only using the sun and some basic tools. We are asked to use a nail, paper and a flat surface on a sunny day, oh and of course, a clock because time is very important for this experiment.

The first part of the experiment is to generate the data in the field. I first found a good spot that had little shade, where the sun was shinning during the period of high noon. Where I live, I do not have a very good Southern view, so there was going to be some problems during the experiment. Once I found the spot, I set up my table and put a nail through it, or in this case, a piece of metal rod through one of the cracks that was already in the table, and poked the paper over the nail. The nail was going to be my “Sun Dial,” and the paper was going to be the area in which I was going to record the shadows with.

During the experiment I was to record the position of the shadow in ten minute intervals. Starting a 11:30am, or 10:30 am Standard Time, and then running until 2:00pm, or 1:00pm Standard Time was because of Day Light Savings Time, and making sure that somewhere during this time period I would hit high noon, which would be the real 12:00pm instead of the start of the time-zone I live in.

There was a point during the experiment when I hit the shadow of the largest tree around my home. It hit right at the highest point of the sky, right at the most critical part of the experiment. There was just enough of a shadow cast by the metal nail on the paper to give me a reference point to mark off with. There was a little bit of a fudge factor here.

Once completed, and 2:00pm came by, I packed up everything in moved it inside so I could start measuring the dots from the hole in the paper. This is was sort of an interesting point during the experiment because I would have thought that the dots would have made a crescent pattern rather than a straight line on the paper. Once I started graphic it out I realized what was going on. I notice how the Sun raced across the sky, and how the distance of the shadow changed, even though the distance of the Sun changed in the sky during the day travelling from East to West. This made sense explaining the dots looking like a straight line across the paper.

Next, are my results.

What I have found out as a result of this experiment is that “high noon” is really 12:50pm Daylight Savings Time where I live, in Fort Langley, BC. This means that I am ten minutes off from when my time-zone says it is night noon. The blue line on the chart above is the distance of the shadow compared to the time of day it was taken, so the lowest point on the line (curve) is the highest point of the Sun in the sky–my high-noon.

Posted in Astronomy, General, Photographs, University classes | 6 Comments »

Half and Half With Happy Neighbours

September 21st, 2009 Thomasso

First, tomorrow is the Equinox, or the final day of summer and the first day of Autumn, around 2:18pm, September 22, 2009. Normally it falls on the 21 of September, but this year it is a day late. Well, really it is not late, that is the way our calendar works. Our calendar has a lot of bugs in it, so keeping events on track and uniformed is unfortunately impossible to do with it.

Tomorrow, me and some friends will have a little get-together, as we always do, to celebrating the passage of the seasons. I consider these moments true events without the hype and commercialism that most other celebrations go. We have debated this to death, and for better of worse, keeping it away from the mainstream is the better way to go. We try and attend right at the time that it occurs, but sometimes that can be difficult for some as it is either during the dead of night or during work times. For us keener’s, taking time off from work to celebrate it is just one way we keep it going.

This started for me back about 13 years ago when me and a couple of old high school buddies, who were all amateur astronomy buffs, realized that in order to really appreciate the seasons and the start of the new year, December 21 should be the day that we do it.  We managed to keep it going ever since then. One buddy, Richard, even goes so far as to bring his spouse along, so now it has become a family event for swapping stories and having a few drinks, or in my case a good excuse to have a coffee with the old boys. Only a couple of us get together for the other three events, Fall and Spring equinox and the Summer solstice.

Last Saturday I reached the milestone of reaching 10 installations of the operating system Ubuntu-Linux within my neighbourhood. That is “out with the old, in with the new.” Old, meaning Microsoft in this case.

In every case of installing the new operating system it was due to users not willing to pay for the upgrades, and for the most part, their PC machines were old and slow compared to current standards, so the Window$ system would not work properly. There is sort of a consumer dilemma when it comes to buying a computer, that is, when you fork out up to and over a thousand dollars, you expect it to work for more than a year before you need to throw more money at it.  So spending a $150.00 for an entirely new upgraded operating system is a good deterrent for anyone to continue to go along with the scam. And I do mean scam.

“It is hard to justify paying for something that gives me advertising, limited usage and viruses galore—there must be a better way?” my friend Kim said.

When I introduced them to the open source systems, they are stunned. It is like they never heard the word “Free” before. It is through word of mouth that they find out that such a world exists.  And oddly, when they get frustrated with it, or they need some help and get mad, I tell them they could always go back to what they had before, they flat out respond with a “NO—Fix it!”

Special Note: Thanks Diane for catching those errors for me and bringing them to my attention. I hang my head in shame, and guilty as charged.

Posted in Astronomy, Events, General, Humour, Linux, Photographs | Comments Off

A Round and A Round, I Hate Things That Spin

September 20th, 2009 Thomasso

This is funny. I have to do this assignment  in my science class where we must take sky observations of the stars and draw them onto a piece of paper. This has several problems. I finally gave up and went back inside, and will probably guess the rest the observation part.

My first problem was figuring out how to orientate the paper, drawing it on the hood of my truck, to get the orientation of the sky above me correct. I fixed that by just standing and facing Northward then looking up and drawing all the stars I could. But looking further South became a problem as I needed to lay down on the grown to look behind me South word, but that made drawing more difficult because I no flat surface to draw on then.

My second problem was repeating this “look up and gaze” and “look down and draw” several times, always double checking to see if everything was in proportion to the sky. This is where I ran into some serious trouble with vertigo. The gaze-look routine soon started making me sick, and I had to sit down inside my truck to settle things down.

The next thing that happen was the construction site across from me has out door lighting, but halfway through my exercise they turned on their high powered flood lights that lit the building and all the mist around me up. That took away any chances of good quality star gazing for tonight. I think if I had asked them to turn off the lights they would have probably tazered me to death. Security at construction sites are a big deal these days.

Well, at least I got most of the exercise done. The Math I probably have 90 percent completed now, and the observations are 75 complete too. I still have to go outside because we have to observe and record how much the sky has rotated in a one hour period, and note which direction the stars moved, either clockwise, or counter clockwise.

One last observation: Looks like summer is almost over! I forgot the equinox is just hours away. It is getting cooler out there now.

Posted in Astronomy, General, Humour, Photographs, University classes | Comments Off

Protected: Physics Science Class Data: ASTR3110

September 19th, 2009 Thomasso

Posted in Astronomy, General, University classes | Comments Off

The Solstice Celebrations

June 21st, 2009 Thomasso

The first day of summer is just another blip on the calender, like the religious holidays, these events go by hardly unnoticed, unless the stores are heavily marketing them. Fortunately the marketers haven’t commercialized this summer Solstice event, and for the most part they have kept quiet for this astrological significance.

I built a makeshift Sundial so I could watch the Sun reach its apex in the sky which would mark the longest daylight period of the year, when it reaches the highest point, but the cloud cover was so bad that I gave up on it and took it inside. I wanted to capture the shadow with my camera but the threat of rain and overcast sky conditions kept me inside for most of the morning when it took place. So what can you do? Weather is so unpredictable…

I have a neighbour who really took a interest in my Sundial. She asked what I was building, and I told her. She wanted me to get her when the sun reached the highest point so she could see it for herself. Of course that never happened because of the weather. So, it is interesting that some people do take a notice in these things, and that they seem to have a special interest with “old school technology” like my sundial. Perhaps in her own particular way she was celebrating the longest day of the year too?

The only down side to the summer Solstice is that from now on the days start to get shorter until the winter Solstice. However, I being the “back yard” astronomer that I am, I do know that there is this thing called the seasonal lag, which is when the Sun regulates daylight and the changing temperatures of the seasons, so there is always a lag from after the Sun changes from its Northern track then back down to its Southern track, or lowest point in the sky. The time it takes for each hemisphere to warm up, or cool down, is usually about three months. Therefore, the days maybe getting shorter, but the average temperature overall will increase for the next few months.

There are still some good days ahead for Sun worshipping—don’t worry.

Posted in Astronomy, Events, General | Comments Off

Happy Summer Time!

June 21st, 2009 Thomasso

Yes, finally, it is Summer! As of (proximately) 10:00am this morning, the Sun will have reached its maximum point in the sky for the Northern Hemisphere, and from now, until Winter, the days will gradually get shorter. But in the mean time, we have four months of Summer! Enjoy!

I’m sure glad I can spend today at home, and today being the first day of summer, it should be a national holiday.

Posted in Astronomy, Events, General | Comments Off

The 22 Degree Halo

May 17th, 2009 Thomasso

I was sitting outside reading when the clouds finely moved out from over top of me and this rush of warm light beamed down. When I looked up I saw the huge halo around the sun. The halo was well pronounced, so I rushed inside to grab my camera and capture it.

While I was outside with the camera I thought I would take some other photos of various objects while there was super good light. I thought I would try some micro photography with a wide angle lens and see how far I could push its boundaries. Sticking a lens less than 2 cm away from the subject was very interesting because even though the camera was telling me that the object was out of focus and the motion sensor was off the scale, the image turned out not to badly anyway.

Posted in Astronomy, General, Photographs | Comments Off