TL;DR: We saw Mercury while on vacation! Wednesday night, we were walking back from dinner, and saw this sight in the western sky. (Picture courtesy GD1): "What is that bright speck at the upper limb of the moon?", I wondered. I vaguely recalled that there was an annular eclipse around now. I was tired from a full day, so my brain said: " Baily's Beads "! This jolted me into action. I yelled "It's an eclipse!" and tore off down the hallway to fetch my 50x zoom camera from the hotel room. Witnesses say I just missed bowling over some alarmed tourists, and numerous grandchildren raced after me. One witness (SIL1) said he'd never seen me move so fast.. A jink and a jag, and I got to our room's balcony, camera in hand, just in time for everything to go behind the clouds. My picture: We're home now, and I've been curating some of our images. I zoomed in on the highlight of GD1's picture: and later SIL2 offered up his, which I zoomed ...
This page at Laurence Livermore National Laboratory is a great time waster. I recommend looking at the following geographies for different years: Texas <-- industry has become less efficient? California <-- not much change, despite the perception of them being a greening economy Iceland <-- it helps to live on top of submerged volcanoes Tanzania <-- huge country, they use no energy, and what they do use comes from biomass. Saudi Arabia <-- no surprise Canada <-- spot the oil sands gas consumption! China is ten times bigger than Canada as far as energy goes, in almost all aspects. Yet their population is almost 40 times more. It's our SUVs and shopping malls! If you squint just right at some location over a decade, you can see North America replacing coal with natural gas. Alternative sources are making some headway, but aren't significant (yet?). One thing I don't understand is why there is more rejected energy, or wasted energy now compared to a dec...
We recently has PV solar panels installed on the roof.The day we turned them on was cloudy, and they produced almost nothing. 18 cents worth of electricity. The next day was very sunny and resulted in about 75% of their designed power production midday and about $6 worth of energy, which is very good for a short day in December. Then we had two good sized snowstorms just before Christmas, and the resulting accumulation on the panels shut down production to almost nothing. Here's the week centred on Christmas Day. So what happened on December 27th to restore production? Mid-morning, the sun and warmth was finally uncovering the panels from their snowy blanket. In the late morning after taking this picture, while I was checking the oil prior to our road trip, an angel came to me in a dream and suggested moving the car back from the house. Just before 2:00PM, while doomscrolling on the couch, I heard a loud rumble and felt the house shake a bit. Going outside,...
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