Mt Everest was summited 70 years ago today!!
Rain here, less than 1/3"..wooo
Double monthly total
So...still in a drought
verizon "service" what a joke
A sunny June column on a gloomy, no sun, day
June 2023 - On & Off Earth
June, with its long, long hours of sunlight, is to me the poster child for Daylight Saving Time. The hour shift, back in March, really allows maximum usage and enjoyment, with proper protections, of the sun this month. The June sun rises before 6am, crosses the sky nearly overhead before setting just before or just after 8:30pm, all month. Earth’s northern end reaches its most tilted point toward the sun in our yearly orbit, the Summer Solstice, on the 21st at 10:58am EDT.
Once it does finally get dark on the evening of the Solstice, still brilliant Venus and much dimmer Mars are joined by a thin crescent moon to form a neat little triangle in the west with Leo looming above them. The celestial lion, its head shaped like a backwards question mark, has the star Regulus, the lion’s heart, at the base. Regulus is close to Mars in brightness but both appear almost 100 times dimmer than Venus. Astrology buffs will note our orbit shifts the sun from Taurus into Gemini on the Solstice, as well.
June’s Full Strawberry Moon is early in the month, on the night of the 3rd and 4th. This will be a King moon, the moon closer to Earth producing big tidal swings in Earth’s oceans. The Full moon will follow just behind Antares, the Red Super Giant star that is the heart of Scorpio, both traversing low across the sky on the short night.
While seemingly steady, our sun is far from it. A raging ball of high-energy plasma, fueled by the nuclear fusion of hydrogen to helium, our local star goes through a pair of 11 year sunspot cycles. First documented by Galileo in the 1600’s (likely a big part of why he went blind - ALWAYS USE SERIOUS EYE PROTECTION FOR SOLAR OBSERVATION) we are currently closing in on the next peak in one of those 11 year cycles, expected in 2025.
The recent reports of southern sightings of the Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights, is a direct result of the surge in sunspot activity. In addition to the light we do see from the sun, there is so much more we don’t see. Our star releases all wavelengths of radiation as well as a variety of high energy particles, the solar wind. The most dangerous explosive eruptions related to visibly darker regions of disturbed magnetism, sunspots.
The good news for Earth, we have a protective atmosphere and our own magnetic field that work together to absorb and/or deflect much of the really bad stuff. Earth’s magnetism diverts that energy towards the poles where it interacts with our upper atmosphere, charging it up. Turning away from the sun, toward the darkness of space, the atmosphere releases that energy as light, the northern, and southern, lights. When the sun over-zaps Earth the auroras slip into view farther south.
While the auroras are spectacular, their appearance in the lower latitudes comes with a warning. The sun is 99.97% of all the mass in our solar system; it is the gazillion pound gorilla in our room. Big solar blasts have knocked out satellites and power grids in the past and regularly shut down short wave radio signals. NASA does have satellites out there just watching the sun (the solar wind is slower than the radiation we see) and power grids have plans in place for big blasts.
June, kicking off both the summer and hurricane seasons, is a great month to get out and enjoy the long hours of daylight but with solar respect. The June sun can be fierce so remember your shades, the sunscreen and perhaps a hat but keep an ear out for reports of potential aurora sightings. Their wild display of colors will be something you will never forget.
Randy Holladay
Oldrockguy@gmail.com
Choco dogs take a romp break
and google as a word processor...that too is a joke..so bad
Days of my life wasted waiting for verizon to do their job...they SUCK and they couldn't care less
40 minutes to load this blog...and counting...over 4 hours now...
Wow...only 4 hrs and 25 minutes to post a blog...
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