Sun Dogs and Desert Glass

Was out imaging a Sunrise when a couple Sun dogs formed, very pretty and long.



I thought to myself, what a beautiful backdrop for a piece of my Libyan Desert Glass so I ran home hoping that the dogs would still be there when I got back, they were, and took a pic.


You can actually see a little of a Solar Pillar coming up through the middle of the glass. What exactly is Libyan Desert Glass?


Just back in 1998 an Italian Mineralogist Vincenzo de Michele was visiting the Egyptian Museum in Cairo when he happened to notice the scarab in one of King Tutankhamun's breastplates. The Egyptians said it was a semi precious stone used in some of the Egyptian's Pharaoh's jewelery back in the day. Vincenzo had his doubts and did some research on the scarab and found it to be glass. He then remembered back in 1932 when British explorer Patrick Clayton found this yellow green glass in the Sahara desert. Comparing it to some of the found pieces he concluded they were identical. So the mystery of this beautiful glass started, how was it made and where did it come from?


Further investigation and chemical analysis showed that the dark streaks in some of the collected samples and in my first image sample with the Sun dogs, were made up of Osmium and Iridium, both very rare and something you would not expect to find in surface rocks on Earth but are very common in meteorites. Long story short using computer models and simulations they found that the samples were probably created by an asteroid's or comet's arial burst around 28 million years ago. They figure an asteroid or comet, 120 meters in diameter hit our atmosphere at around 20 kms a second, broke up just before it hit the ground creating temperatures and a fire storm as hot as the surface of the Sun melting the surrounding sand, when the sand cooled quickly it formed this glass.

There is another theory as well. " The Altlantis Blueprint" puts forth the theory that the ancients, and by ancient I mean more so then the Egyptians, understood all about nuclear power and that some incident involving nuclear power or weapons created the desert glass, very interesting, not something I really go for but still cool to read.


Roger sent me his first Earthshine image of the Moon, great shot Roger!! Roger is getting all geared up for the Moon /Pleiades conjunction this coming Tuesday night. The Moon and Pleiades will be traveling together throughout the night but will be closest around 9:30 pm CST.

I'll leave you now with a YouTube video of part one of the special "Fireball of Tutankhamun"

God Made Meets Man Made, The Sequel

A title I have used before in an earlier post, 10 Hanna Montana/Miley Cyrus 3D glasses to the first person who comments when I used it last, hint, "Sunsets". Thanks to these wacky cold -40c temps I was able to get some more cool pics of Sunrises/Sunsets. This time the Sun set perfectly behind a High Voltage Tower, how cool was that?

Flat Sunrise

Do you know that in one second the Sun produces an equivalent of a million years of Earth's energy? Problem being the Sun is 92 million miles from us and only a billionth of it's energy reaches us, and out of that billionth, we only utilize a millionth, in other words we only utilize one million billionth of the Sun's energy. Don't be so sad, they figure in around 3,200 years when we attain a Class II civilization we will have harnessed the Sun's output by using something like a Dyson sphere.

Red Flash

I have always been fascinated with the types of civilizations Humankind has to look forward to;

Type 0: Where we are now, not necessarily good for nothing, just not good as Type I.

Type I: This is where we control all the planets resources, energy output will be 1,000's of times the output we have now, can control things like the weather, earthquakes, volcanoes and build cities on oceans, time frame 200 years.

Type II: This is where we harness the power of our star the Sun, probably using something like a Dyson Sphere, time frame 3,200 years.

Type III: They are able to explore the Galaxy, have broken the light barrier, yes I believe it is possible, the physics we know now say it isn't, but hey, we are after all a class 0 civilization, what do we know? Compare this Civilization to the Borg, time frame 5,800 years.


Green Flash

All the stuff about types of civilizations and time frames is purely hypothetical
and could change depending whether or not we kill ourselves off and how fast we get stuff like the LHC up and running and benefit from what we learn from them.



I'll leave you now with an animation of a Sunrise with a solar pillar I took the other day.

The Saskatchewan (Buzzard Coulee) Meteorite

At around 6:26 pm CST November 20 2008 a 10 tonne meteoroid collided with our Earth's atmosphere at 40,000 km an hour creating a fireball so bright it was viewed by thousands of people across the land from British Columbia to Manitoba. This meteoroid with temperatures as hot as the Sun exploded with the force of 300 tonnes of TNT sending thousands of pieces of space debris called meteorites down to Earth over a 20 sq. km area 35 km South of Lloydminster , a place called Buzzard Coulee Saskatchewan.


I now own a piece of this meteoroid thanks to the tireless, selfless efforts of Murray who has been involved with the scientists led by Dr. Alan Hildebrand. Murray is helping with the collection of specimens as well as documenting the fall. Murray has spent countless hours negotiating a price with the local farmers to bring a few pieces to average people like me and you, very refreshing considering the money hungry people out looking to make a profit from these stones.



No I'm not a fanatic, just because I made a shrine for it or gave it the name Boba jr., there is just something about holding a piece of debris from space that makes you feel you are touching something special, and the smell, I've smelt a lot of rocks in my time but this one just smells cool, like space.


Okay, a little tech stuff here. The meteorite is classified as a H 3/4 chondrite meteorite, the H just means it's high in iron content, it will be attracted to a magnet, I have it in my hands sticking to a magnet right now, that's right I am holding it and typing right now, I'm about to smell it again, excuse me,..................., okay I'm back, awesome. Called a chondrite because it contains tiny chondrules. Chondrules are tiny droplets of silicates formed in our early Solar nebula, starting out as tiny molten droplets which cooled and then through accretion by gathering surrounding dust and particles it formed it's parent asteroid. The image above courtesy me, arrows courtesy Murray show these primitive droplets in the meteorite. By studying these chondrules it helps scientist understand how our early Solar system formed, how cool is that?


The image above is a microscopic image of the dark side of my meteorite, or what is called the fusion crust. The fusion crust is the result of the surface of the meteoroid melting due to the extreme temperatures created as it is traveling with great speed through our atmosphere, making a glassy black/blue finish, notice the stress cracks.

They estimate hundreds if not thousands of pieces are still waiting to be recovered. I will be out in the spring either with the scientists or by my self or both looking for some of these treasures and will be documenting my quest with video and pics, stay tuned.

If there is anyone reading this post that has any further information relating to the fall let me know and I will contact Murray and the team with said info.

I'll leave you now with a video of some of the news coverage back in November.

The Green Flash, the Red Flash

Man oh man, I just love viewing and taking pics of sky phenomenon that sound like superheroes.
"Honey.. I'm going out to try and capture the "Green Flash". See, there is something about saying that. I have made it my goal to try and capture these elusive/seldom seen phenomenon the last couple months, and finally did.

There is only about a couple months I have to do it, you have to have a true horizon and in my area the Sun only sets on a true flat horizon December and parts of January. If you don't have a true horizon the green flash happens behind a hill or the grade of the landscape. You see, when you are looking at the Sun on the horizon, you aren't, you are looking at the apparent Sun, the real Sun is actually below the horizon but due to atmosphere refraction the real Sun is bent up, much in the same way when you put a straw in a glass of water, the medium, water, bends or refracts the straw, you see two straws , the actual and the apparent straw.

Everything in the sky, the sky being the medium, is bent to a degree, about a half, or the diameter of the Sun, the apparent or fake Sun is actually sitting on top of the real Sun, which you don't see.


The illustration above shows what happens. Because the color green has a higher frequency, it has a steeper curve, more so then the reds, and is the last color to be refracted up to be seen by you.


I've also found that regular temps don't do it. I've been out in temps anywhere from -20c to -35c. At -20c the Sun looks a normal round, and no green flash, at -35c, you see a funky Sun, parts missing, square top and the like, this is because when the Sun travels along our lower atmosphere at -35c it's sunlight goes through more atmospheric temperature extremes making the separation of the reds and greens more apparent. Sorry for getting too technical but I thought there might be some of you that would appreciate the whys.


The Red Flash above is caused by atmospheric inversions causing all of the light being blocked, again the extreme temperatures, so you get the red all by itself, this time the red's longer wavelength helps, it is able to sneak through the lower atmosphere, filled with more particles, like dust, the greens and the blues are scattered because of their higher frequency, they tend to bump into all the lower atmospheric dust particles and get scattered out of the light path. What is interesting about this image is you can actually see a tiny bit of green on top of the Sun, so I have actually captured a green and red flash in the same image.




Again, sorry for getting so technical, it's not like there is going to be a test after, so if you want you can just take a look at what I think are cool pics and move along and not having to worry about a quiz or anything.

I got a cool perigee atmospheric Moon from Ivanhoe, this one I thought I would animate, looks cool, thanks Ivanhoe for allowing me to post it, and if you want , you get a free pair of Hanna Montana/Miley Cyrus 3D glasses.

The January 7 Moon and Pleiades Conjunction

Moon and Pleiades conjunction January 7, 2009.


While you can, enjoy the 6 year time frame when the Moon's orbit is such that it allows these awesome conjunctions/occultations with the Pleiades, the 6 years ends 2010, and won't be repeated again till 2022.

Moon and Pleiades conjunction April 8, 2008.


I have posted the conjunctions/occultation I have imaged since I got my camera December 2007.

Moon and Pleiades Occultation June 30, 2008.


The image above was the occultation that was not to happen, all the astronomy mags stated that the occultation would be over , turning into a conjunction by the time the Moon rose in the western part of North America, not so, the Moon rose occulting both Pleione and Atlas of the Pleiades.

Moon and Pleiades conjunction September 19, 2008.

The next meeting of these two gems of the night sky will be February 3, 2009. Look to the SW around 10:30 pm. CST.

Moon and Pleiades Conjunction December 10, 2008.

They meet again March 3, 2009, they will be at their closest around 2am that morning, just as the grouping sets in the west. All the times I have quoted are CST, if you would like an exact time in your area you can email me or visit Sky View Cafe, a great site that gives you the location of all the main celestial bodies at anytime in your location.

I'll leave you now with a beautiful double lunar corona animation.