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  • From: "Rick Williams" <mrfarm AT frontiernet.net>
  • To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Market-farming] Cold and Clear and the Stars too, somewhat OT
  • Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 21:25:36 -0600

Dave Lilligren wrote:

> Tonight, it is supposed to go down to between 20 and 25 below zero (air
> temperature). Unfortunately, we are in a snow drought (hardly any on the
> ground), so the frost line will just go deeper. The high of 20 forecasted
> for Wednesday sure sounds balmy to me right now!

Tonight is crystal clear out. I came in around 7 pm after feeding the young
calves their last milk for the night and Orion (my fav constellation) was
out there with me as he often is:) The Seven Sisters were easily spotted
just above a line as if an arrow was shot from his bow.

Judy was in the "big city" tonight so called me on the radio when she was
about 30 miles out and she asked if I knew where Saturn was. I honestly did
not know, so she asked me to bring up "The Sky," which is a standard
astronomy computer program to display the stars at your location and time.
And Saturn was not far above Orion's "head." When she got home I told her
that and she said she thought that she was looking at Saturn there. She went
out to call the steers in for a mootel experience tonight but I don't think
she will break out the telescope to look at stars:)

Recently, when it was at least slight warmer, we scoped Saturn and actually
did get it in the field for a few seconds before a kind of haze blocked the
sky. Tonight it would not be a problem with any haze:) I often think about
how the early astronomers, including Galileo, must have thought when they
looked at those "stars" and realized that something was different about
them.

One of the benefits we also get living out here on the ridge, is a nearly
clear horizon in all directions. And we sometimes have seen utterly
fantastic aurora borealis including very high speed plasma discharges
actually passing beyond the zenith. If anyone had told me that was possible
at our latitude (43 degrees, 33', 35" N) I would not have believed it.

The only other time I can remember such things (only even more spectacular
due to the unusual conditions) was during IGY in 1957 when the plasma was so
intense that the entire sky was lite up for the night with swirling flames
suggesting the end of the world. I seemed like when you were lying down and
looking up, you were looking down into a cauldron of swirling fire. I have
never seen anything like that since.

Sincerely,

Rick Williams




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