I was out in the back garden early yesterday morning hoping for a few flyovers ... without any notable success ...and I'm still hoping to hear owls .. there's hardly been any all year, which is a drastic and sad thing. But I did get a great view of Venus low in the East.. bang in the middle there. And to the right of it, v.v.v.v.v.v faint indeed,just over half-way to the roofs on the right, is Spica. You can only just pick it out as a v pale disc. You could try blowing it up ... hold down the CTRL key and swizzle the mouse wheel. You can usually tell a planet from a star, because the light from stars tends to twinkle, but the light from planets doesn't. They shine steadily. But why ? Well, starlight has come a hell of a long way from a tiny tiny point over a hell of a long time, and only maybe a few photons are arriving per second, and they have to get past dust clouds in space, and then they have to slog all the way through our atmosphere which varies in temperature and density and mucks up their direction of travel, woggling them about, and maybe only 1 of them will hit your retina one second, and then 3, and then none, and then 5 ...so the starlight varies .... that's the twinkling. But planets ... well for a start, they loom much larger in the sky, and are much much much closer, so a lot more photons get launched towards us, for a much much much shorter distance, so there's far fewer dusticles* in the way, a lot lot lot less, and even though they get woggled around in the atmosphere there's so many that still loads and loads of them hit your retina every second, drowning out any slight variations in the number of photons per second. So they don't seem to twinkle. Sorry about all the technical terms there ! Dusticles!! When I was younger and keener and didn't feel the cold so much, I would get out there really early to get stuff on my house/3K/Year list. Mipits, redpolls, siskins, the odd brambling, the occasional Tree sparrow, wagtails, thrushes etc . I often had to be dragged back into the house by my ankles and dumped in front of the gas fire to bring me back to life.Those bloody steps are right bumpy as well. No wonder I've aged prematurely. I did zip down to the saltmarsh after that, but once again, all I got was a few Skylarks... v. quiet. On the plus side, I got a few chunks of firewood. No sign of those Egyptian geese though. Also, I couldn't find the recently-reported Barnacle amongst the 300 or so Canadas. It's all go you know. So there you are then .. a planet, a bit of highly technical stuff, using all the latest scientific vocabulary, then a bit of unsuccessful vismigging. But sometimes, out there all on my own, I feel a bit like a one man rock 'n 'roll band ..... cue the music ..... Venus - Venus passed between us and the Suhe 8th of this month in the east before sunrise5% - which is why the bri I bet you'd like to see my specially invented Vismigophone ! It's been on here twice before, but I sort of can't help wanting to show you it again ... it bounces the tweets the birdicles make into your ears..... * Dusticles ... a new word invented by me ... Dust Particles ! Also notice the special binicles vismiggers use.
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AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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