It’s the start of a new year and, as with many years past, I’m getting ready to go to the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, Texas. I’ve been a member since the mid 1990s and have been going to their meetings nearly every year since then.Most years I try to post here about some of the latest and greatest and hottest news in astronomy and astrophysics that we find out about at the meeting. I’ll do that again this year, and I’m going to try and put up a vodcast or two from the meeting as well. So, keep your eyes peeled for astronomy news and maybe a little video program with an “insider look” at the AAS meeting!Also in the new year, I’ll be working on more vodcasting for Haystack Observatory. We have a contract to do a series called Space Weather FX for them, and the first episode is up! You can watch it here as a flash animation, but by all means, go over to their site for downloadable versions and read the background info on the series and who’s working on it. Eventually it will be syndicated to iTunes and other places on the web.Finally, I’ve been working on updating my web site so, if you haven’t checked out my other pages, head over to TheSpacewriter.com and see what I’ve done.
Space Weather FX Vodcast
Note: to see this video here, you need to tell your browser not to block active content, or you need to get the Flash player.
One of the consequences of living on a planet that orbits a star is that we get seasons. Every planet in the solar system has reasons for seasons:
the tilt of the planet on its axis—which determines the angle of the incoming sunlight that strikes the surface (or upper atmosphere) of the planet;
the number of hours of daylight experienced on any given part of the planet (more hours of sunlight mean more warmth)
For those of us in northern hemisphere winter, right now we’re having shorter days and colder weather because our part of the planet is tilted away from the Sun and we have fewer hours of sunlight per day than the folks in the southern hemisphere, who are enjoying the height of summer weather.
This is all academic if you’re looking at some other planet, like Mars or Venus or Neptune, and trying to figure out what time of year it is on various places on those planets. It’s not so academic if you’re in the “middle of the experiment” so to speak.
Where I live it’s winter. There’s no question about it. We’ve had cold weather for some weeks now, and the Sun is much lower in the southern part of our sky than it is the rest of the year. Nighttime comes around 5 p.m. And, it has been snowing.
Today I looked out the window and saw these huge snowflakes falling. So, I did what anybody who’s been stuck in front of a computer all day indoors on a cold winter day would do: I grabbed my camera and started taking pictures to show to the folks I know in warmer climes. I even managed to capture a few short movies with my digital still camera (alas, I was shooting through screened windows, but hey— you grab your chances when and where you can).
So, here’s today’s real-life flash video demonstration of a seasonally caused weather pattern and what it looks like from indoors, in the form of a little music and visual-arts video. Click on the snowflake and enjoy!
To see this video here, you need to tell your browser not to block active content, or you need to get the Flash player. RSS readers who can’t access the video can download it here.
