48 to 68

The Green Sun comes to us courtesy of those very underfunded folks at NASA. For details on why green or why not yellow? I refer you to the website full of truly amazing images of yellow, red, blue and paisley suns plus other color enhanced celestial bodies. Today, however, I would like to discuss the one truly great unifying topic of conversationalists around the globe. No not religion, nor sex and at this time of year, definitely not politics. Today I shall dwell on the weather, in particular on not so extreme temperature varients.

The sun had once again asserted itself after a week of rainy grey. Not complaining mind you, I am terribly fond of grey and damp but the weather is as they say changeable. Mid-term predictions (isn't it nice to read 'mid-term' not followed by election), oops sorry politics .... anyway the weather forecast over the next 30 days here in Berkeley calls for temperatures not exceeding 68 degrees nor lower than 48 degrees. Over the previous 30 days the range has been 99 degrees for the high and 49 for the low. Completely unacceptable!

If I were given the power to control the ambient temperature with a twenty degree range, well then the next month is near perfection. Okay, I can go for 70/50 perhaps even 72/52 but that strains both the upper and the lower limits of personal heating perfection. If I get a thirty degree range then I would happily exist in a 71/41 world. One can always visit olde friends in the north for a white christmas once a decade. Skiers and other winter athletes can travel to snow and ice, but simple day to day existence should require no more than a light cotton hoodie and a couple of World Wildlife Fund throw blankets. If it gets really chilly at night, well then you just throw on another cat. Air conditioning should be limited to "places I might visit in winter" and everyone everywhere should be required to power all AC with solar energy.

Yes this was a bit of a restrained rant today, but I'm feeling much better now; how about you?

[11/14/10 Those bastards! 82 degrees today]

A Doh! Sunset

Just forty-five minutes before sunset the cloud layer lifts and there is the bridge with a light blue and pink sky behind it. This is the sunset that will align perfectly with the bridge, lo and behold this might actually happen!

Slowly the golden streaks of sunlight intensify the overcast holds high above the Bay, even with my meager little camera this could be the event I have been blathering about for weeks. 

Yes! A solar appearance and with this angle of decline the sun will appear to be setting right smack in the middle of the bridge, it will actually be cradled between the two towers. Tolkienian prose leaps to mind.

Wait! What is that large dark bank of clouds. Quick check the weather website. Weekend storm moving in -- marine layer 35 miles off shore. Quick mathematical calculation: marine layer 35 miles away, sun 92,875,414 miles away. Hmm, that is going to cause a juxtapositional problem.

Damn! Foiled again by water vapor.

One Last Weather Post

With the forecast steady for partly cloudy days and evening fog followed by weekend showers, I will make this the last lament about missed sun, moon and bridge observations.

The shot above is from last night just before sunset, framed in that dim pink swath just above the water is the Golden Gate Bridge, trust me. The shot below is from about fifteen minutes later the very faint line across the sun is one of the cables from the bridge. Yes to the naked eye and the binocular assisted view it was a very nice image.

Next post, I shall return to those thrilling days of yesteryear when I blather on about whatever comes to mind, heart, soul or spleen.

Oh and the moonrise was brilliant last night, I was out in North Berkeley and got a perfect view of the gibbous moon slipping in and out of the high clouds but that was far to the east, by the time the moon had swung across the sky to my windowed western view, twas nary a shimmer behind the grey.

Twilight Time, to dream awhile

In veils of deepening gloom

As fantasy strides over colourful skies

The fog disappearing from view

Moody Blues, Twilight

Days of Future Passed

If the Sun Sets in the Darkness . . .

This is the view from my window this morning, which provides you with all the information you need about the moonset early this morning. Unfortunately the weather predictors are not encouraging about our chances for more celestial dazzlement this week. The much anticipated full moon settling over San Francisco will occur this Friday and Saturday, which as you can see below is not apparently going to be prime viewer weather.

TODAY	TOMORROW	THU	FRI	SAT	6-10 DAY
Partly Cloudy	Sunny	Partly Cloudy	Few Showers	Showers	Extended Forecast
High: 73° Low: 51°	High: 69° Low: 50°	High: 62° Low: 51°	High: 64° Low: 51°	High: 65° Low: 52°

The first sunset through the Golden Gate narrows happened yesterday, you will not notice in my shot below any sort of bridge or the golden opening to the Pacific. A near fifty mile long fog bank crept in during the late afternoon yesterday to fill San Francisco Bay from end to end.

I would mention one final time that I really am fond of this type of weather. The rain and fog are fascinating for me, my spirits are lifting by the damp and chilled weather, it's like be wrapped in a cocoon the size of the universe. Sounds are muffled, perceptions shrink and we are forced to go on internal sensors. Perhaps in the next few days we will get a glimpse of the astronomical workings between the clouds, if not, I shall attempt to entertain and minister from the internal microcosm.

Pinprick holes in a colourless sky

Let insipid figures of light pass by

The mighty light of ten thousand suns

Challenges infinity and is soon gone

Night time, to some a brief interlude

To others the fear of solitude

Brave Helios, wake up your steeds

Bring the warmth the countryside needs

Moody Blues The Day Begins

from Days of Future Passed

A Little Lunar Physics

With my celestial gazing blotted out by the grey weather again last night, I turn to a bit of chat about astronomical angles with some solar/lunar synchronicity tossed in for leavening. As I am sure most of you know, but may not often contemplate, the moon has no light of its own. Earth's satellite is a reflective surface, what we see as the illuminated moon is completely solar energy cast back at us.

So when we see or don't see the new moon, it is because the moon is between the earth and the sun. All the light of the sun is on the far side of the moon, which contrary to what Pink Floyd is thought to have said, is not the dark side of the moon at all. At the other apex of earth/sun/moon alignment, a full moon occurs when the earth is between the sun and the moon with the full illumination of the sun on the earth facing moon countenance. The graphic below illustrates these facts of celestial physics. 

When the earth lines up exactly between the sun and the moon, we get a lunar eclipse and I would be remise if I did not remind you that this year on the winter solstice (Dec. 21st) there will be a total lunar eclipse visible in most of North America.

There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact it's all dark.

Pink Floyd Eclipse from Dark Side of the Moon

Whether San Francisco Weather

The best-laid schemes o' mice and' men

Gang aft agley

Robert Burns

After several autumnal heat waves, true fall weather has arrived here in the Bay area. With the lowering to shivering temperatures comes overcast, undercast, fog banks and assorted sky-sea phenomenon. All of these have combined to make my celestial observations more or less muted the last forty-eight hours. The sun has set into high stacks of clouds the last two evenings, the moonset on Friday was an hour early into a high fog bank and last night there was nary a glow from behind the overcast. Today we awoke to grey with a smattering of gray. I was worried that the full moonset next weekend would be blotted out by the dawn but unless we have another change in weather patterns I will miss this highly anticipated week of solar and lunar settings altogether.

I did manage one shot of the setting sun just north of the golden gate narrows last night, you can clearly make out the Golden Gate Bridge. Hope that was not the last sunset this week.

Beauty I'd always missed

With these eyes before

Just what the truth is

I can't say anymore

Moody Blues

Nights in White Satin

Celestial Views

I'll put the photo credit up top when it's actually me, so yes that is my picture up there. That is the sky I woke to this morning and that sky will be the focus of my next series of posts. With apologies to my olde friend Lee, eastcoat Lee not southwest Lee, but with apologies to him and anyone else who has tired of my sky gazing... the next week or so will be an extended meditation looking out my window. In last Sunday's post (two down the scroll) I wrote about the moon setting into the skyscape of San Francisco last Saturday night; well, of course, it has done something similar but completely different every evening since. Each night the illuminated portion of the moon gets bigger, it was quartered last night. The hills and buildings of the City that are descended thru shift and the atmosphere, clouds and light change the images sliding through my view. 

What with the earth rotating, the moon setting later each night, the cloud cover shifting, the moon becoming fuller -- the show offers new celestial perspectives each and every night. Add to that the sunset continues to march south and has reached the north end of the Golden Gate narrows (and bridge), this all portents some really interesting sky viewing over the next week. 

The moonset timetable will require some late nights and dark mornings but if the last several days have been any indication it will clearly be worth the lost sleep. Besides there are a few sections of my current book that could use some dark of night influenced attention.

So don't call too early, I'm going deep nocturnal for awhile and together we will ponder the skies through my window.

I can see it all

From this great height

I can feel the sun

Slipping out of sight

And the world still goes on

Through the night

          Moody Blues

          "Sunset" from Days of Future Passed

Early Eclipse Warning

The picture above is a shot of the solar eclipse as seen in Argentina last Sunday. Trust me -- you want to see this picture larger, here is the link.

This event segues into my second early warning reminder that on the winter solstice this year (Dec. 21, 2010) there will be a total lunar eclipse, which will be visible in all of North America and partially in Europe and northern Asia. In the U.S. the total eclipse with occur at 4:38 AM PST, 5:38 MST, 6:38 CST, unfortunately the moon sets just minutes before totality on the most eastern sections of the U.S.

The total time of the eclipse will exceed 5.5 hours, so even on the east coast you will get quite a show, the rest of the continental U.S., Canada and Central America will see the whole display. In the central time zone the moon will set still partially eclipsed but you will be going back to bed anyway. And mind you this all takes place on the Winter Solstice, start the party planning now!

Physics of a Sunset

About six weeks ago I slept for the first time in the Berkeley apartment, I noticed that first night the sun was setting just a degree or two north of the Marin side of the Golden Gate Bridge. Since that was mid-March the sun was progressing north and I wondered when I would see a sunset directly over the bridge. After reaching its furthest point north on June 21st, a rough estimate would have the sunset back to the bridge around the fourth week of August. So the second part of the question was: just how far does the sun move each day?


I wondered if my distance from the Marin Headlands was a factor (that's the land on the other side of the Bay those of you who don't live around these parts) but I quickly realized that the horizon (where the sun sets) is nearly equidistance from me at all times and the intervening land masses had nothing to do with my calculations. I did, however, correctly intuit that latitude had to make a mathematical difference. Since I was dealing with a tilting planet around a semi-constant axis. I made the only rational decision I could with my decades old calculus.


I went to google.


Between the solstices (approx. June 21st & Dec. 21st), the sunset point changes by about 62.6 degrees in half a year (about 183 days), for an average of 0.34 degrees per day. Near the equinoxes (March 21st, Sept. 21st), the sunset point changes about 0.51 degrees per day; near the solstices, it hardly changes at all. Which means the sunset appears to shift faster around the equinoxes and almost not all all near a solstice.

If you live south of 40 degrees, the change from solstice to solstice is less; if you live north of 40 degrees, the change is greater. Berkeley is at 37 degrees 87 minutes.

The earth's axis is inclined to its orbit by 23.5 degrees. The shift in the sunset point between solstices is roughly given (in degrees) by the formula [2 * 23.5 / cos (latitude)] but this is only an approximation. For a precise calculation, we need to use spherical trigonometry, which I will hold for another time. Nerds may proceed on their own.


What I clearly did notice was that the point of sunset did move quickly right around the time I moved in, near the equinox, in fact by the second week just a line of sight projection seemed to suggest that by the summer solstice the sun would be out of sight to the north. This, of course, assumed a constant movement, which google has help me discover is not the case. Already the daily progression to the north has slowed from the near breakneck half a degree a day when I moved in.


Come summer solstice, I will still have a sunset and somewhere in late August, I will post a week or so of pictures when the sunset beams through the Golden Gate.