Keep Watching the Skies
Jul. 3rd, 2005 11:52 pmOur neighborhood participates in the Block Watch program. The households I know and love best in my neighborhood also participate in the Ephemeral Phenomenon Alert system. If we see a rainbow, a ring around the moon or sun, a particularly impressive sunset or hailstorm, we call Jane and ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
holyoutlaw and Vonda and Ruth and Amber. Tonight's ephemeral phenom was the impact of Deep Impact with Comet Tempe1 1. Luke called to invite us to sit on their roof and stare at the sky.
We (Jane, Luke, Glenn and I) did so, for several minutes. Time went by. We saw Jupiter; we saw Spica. We saw many planes. We saw the backfence neighbor's motion-detector-operated light go on, and off, and on, and off, with an arrgh and a damn and a debate over just how much armament would be appropriate for taking out that light. Jane's dad called to tell her that impact had happened, and that images had been shown on television. She thanked him, and we went on staring at the sky. Jupiter, Spica, space between them.
We gave up and went inside. The NASA web site was overloaded; one image of the dimpled comet was available, so we stared at that for a minute, then shrugged and came home.
We've looked at much less interesting phenomena in much colder and more uncomfortable circumstances. It's good to have friends with whom to look at the sky.
holyoutlaw and Vonda and Ruth and Amber. Tonight's ephemeral phenom was the impact of Deep Impact with Comet Tempe1 1. Luke called to invite us to sit on their roof and stare at the sky.We (Jane, Luke, Glenn and I) did so, for several minutes. Time went by. We saw Jupiter; we saw Spica. We saw many planes. We saw the backfence neighbor's motion-detector-operated light go on, and off, and on, and off, with an arrgh and a damn and a debate over just how much armament would be appropriate for taking out that light. Jane's dad called to tell her that impact had happened, and that images had been shown on television. She thanked him, and we went on staring at the sky. Jupiter, Spica, space between them.
We gave up and went inside. The NASA web site was overloaded; one image of the dimpled comet was available, so we stared at that for a minute, then shrugged and came home.
We've looked at much less interesting phenomena in much colder and more uncomfortable circumstances. It's good to have friends with whom to look at the sky.
