Today's partial Solar eclipse is off to a great start here in Witney, where the cloud cover is working as a perfect solar filter. The eclipse culminated here as a smiling, Cheshire cat-style grin 🙂
UK Eclipse 2015 Photos
A Tour: From You to the Largest Structure in the Universe
Line 1. Let’s start with 'typical' humans. The average human adult male is 1.75 metres tall - that's 3.83 cubits or 5.74 feet. The average female is 1.62 metres - that's 5.4 light-nanoseconds or 0.008 furlongs. You live on Earth (Sol d, perhaps?). This is an Earth-like planet in a Sun-like star system. The third planet of eight... Continue Reading →
Timelapse of the Earth’s Seasons Seen from Space
This video is a time-lapse of images taken from a geostationary satellite. It shows a whole year of the Earth's orbit around the Sun from 2010 to 2011. You can see the difference in illumination between the seasons created by the Earth's tilt; the angle of the line between light and dark changes as we... Continue Reading →
Aurora Borealis Timelapse
A recent APOD featured this beautiful video of the Northern Lights over Norway. The opening shot is almost exactly how I saw the aurora in 2012. The Sun is at the peak of its activity and therefore the likelihood of seeing aurora (at either pole) are increased at the moment. http://vimeo.com/16917950
Apollo Astronauts and Solar Radiation
The Apollo astronauts narrowly avoided serious health problems, and even death due to exposure to radiation from the Sun. Here’s a plot of the approximate Solar proton flux during the Apollo era: Here’s the same but with the missions and health warnings labelled: Scary stuff! I made these images for a talk I gave a while... Continue Reading →
Solar Furnace
This one could just be filed under ‘this is really cool’. Also, I can’t believe it has passed me by my entire life. Have you ever heard of a solar furnace? It’s a James- Bond-esque creation which focusses light from the sun on a massive scale to heat a very small area to a very... Continue Reading →
Orbiting Frog 