Quote of the Day

"It's hard to play simply and still put emotion into it." - Johnny Radelat

The Skies in 2018

[NOTE: All of these photos are click to enlarge.] I get it when I mention to some people that the sky is changing and they don't see anything different. It isn't the whole story, which I won't go into here, but mostly it's because the general public doesn't spend much time looking at the sky, and it's understandable.
 I come from a generation before almost anything modern existed, and things like meteor showers were still a big deal. They'd announce it on TV and in the paper and people would take blankets and sodas out on the front lawn to watch, weather permitting. It started for me by age three or four, so I just developed a love for looking at the sky day and night.
 And that's a far cry from the (not so) ancient times when people did everything from planting to harvesting; from navigating to copulating and many other things according to the phases of the Moon and what stars were where and which constellations the Sun rose and set in and so forth. The sky was entertainment, but it helped keep people alive. Celestial events were cause for great wonder, joy and sometimes fear. The ancient Chinese and other cultures thought that an eclipse; especially of the Sun, was the Sun being eaten by a dragon or some such beast. During an eclipse they'd beat drums and yell and even shoot fireworks and cannons and whatnot to scare the monster away and keep it from devouring the Sun. Boy, were they wrong. Luckily we're much more civilized today. We have Google and GPS and YouTube and Dominoes online and stuff. We have calendars. They're still based on what goes on in the heavens but most people don't look at it that way.

From more recent times, this is one of the many fantastic woodcuts depicting the legendary Leonid meteor shower of 1833. It still holds up as the most intense shower of the last two centuries. People literally thought the sky was falling. Many people thought that it was the end of the world because the stars were falling out of the sky. Some people just stared in amazement and wonder without being afraid but of course there was a lot of fear for the most part. Many people panicked and a few people even committed suicide. No doubt a few local preachers, priests and maybe the odd Voodoo practitioner here or there did a good business that evening.
 There are more truly astounding images; all woodcuts, of the Leonids of 1833 if you want to do a quick search. One woodcut of the meteors over Niagara Falls stands out, and somehow the images have a way of almost drawing you into the event, but maybe that's because I like meteors. By all accounts the woodcuts depicted the event just as it was without any exaggeration or embellishment. There's something of a magical quality to those images. Google it, Dylan, if you want to see what the most kickass, scary-as-fuck, run-for-your-lives, end-of-the-world, kiss-your-ass-goodbye, later on, Chicken Little-esque meteor shower in recent history looks like.
 I spend a bit of time looking at the sky in fact. Most people who hear about something might even look up at the sky for a few minutes and see nothing unusual, and I get that too. Although the strangeness is really picking up lately, you have to spend some extra time looking to catch anything crazy, but if you do look for a while you will see stuff. You'll at least catch a shooting star or two, guaranteed. You might get lucky and see a Saucer. You never know. I couldn't guess the average time I spend looking at the sky in a day...maybe 45 minutes to an hour or more. Even if I'm inside and it's raining I'll look out a window. I know that that's like watching paint dry to some people, but once you see something like a really bright meteor or one of these crazy neon/plasma pink sunsets or the odd flashes being seen everywhere to crazy cloud formations to God forbid...something you can't readily explain, you'll be hooked. I saw my first  meteor at age three. I never get tired of seeing them.
 It would literally take a separate post to talk about all the interesting things I've seen in the sky over the last few years; much less the even crazier things that are being witnessed and caught on video all over the world. As I've said back in 2016 they introduced a dozen brand-new types of clouds. For one thing that's not front-page news, but even the people who heard about it didn't really pay too much attention. I'd at least want to know how 12 new species appeared out of nowhere; just for curiosity's sake. Right now I'm listening to a site on YouTube that tracks incoming meteors. They register as colorful dots or lines, and there's an audible ping; long or short. There's quick pings coming in which means that there are lots of small (and a few larger) meteors coming in at the rate of about 20 a minute, which qualifies as a pretty good shower. Three years ago this much activity would've freaked out people like me and other sky watchers, but to those of is on that page, who've seen massive meteors and insane energy readings coming in off and on for the last two years or so, tonight so far is just a swarm of gnats.

To those who say nothing strange is going on in the sky, the good people all over the UK might differ. Check out these photos from I believe two days ago. These are cloud formations filmed by folks in parts of the island. They covered the sky and pretty much stopped traffic for a while. I guess so. There are several videos but as of last night no stills had made it into image search. I snagged these from a video with permission. I reckon they'll have to come up with a new name for this type of cloud too. Hello, #13.

 These images remind me of the cool experiments they do where they take a big upward-facing speaker and place a sheet of glass or metal over it and sprinkle it with salt or sand. When they run a tone through the speaker the grains align into a pattern which is an exact copy of the invisible sound wave itself. The pattern changes with each different note.
 In fact it demonstrates how you and I and everything in the Universe is created and held together by different frequencies. It isn't a stretch at all to say that this could be caused by some sort of electromagnetic energy. That's what it closely resembles, only on a much larger scale. Anomalous energy readings are being picked up on everything from GOES satellites to weather charts to various solar charts to our very own meteor page, where not even the experts can determine what's causing the intense and bizarre readings, except to say for sure it's definitely not meteors.

            WE INTERRUPT THIS BLOG POST TO BRING YOU A SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT.

 Talk about timing. I just now heard a long ping on the meteor site so I clicked over to see how thick the line on the chart was, which indicates how big the meteor is. It was nothing special, at least lately, but someone had left a comment about an object that was captured today on one of the Alaska FAA skycams. Sure enough I went there and saw it for myself, and here it is. These images aren't timed perfectly but the average is about ten minutes between images.

The first image, taken at 01:02:16 UTC on 8/28, or 8/27 at 17:02:16 Alaska time if you prefer, shows a mostly-clear sky.

In the next image an object can clearly be seen. Before you go jumping on the bandwagon and say "It's a lens flare," keep on looking.

About ten minutes later the object is still there.

Still there.

Much fainter but still visible.

By the next frame it's gone. Of the people who even care to begin with, probably most would still say lens flare, and I can't say with 100% certainty that it isn't, but since I was a kid and into photography I've seen countless lens flares; not to mention hundreds of movies and TV shows, and I've never seen a lens flare that looks or behaves like this. Lens flares generally don't change in size. They aren't shaded with a crescent on one side. They usually don't stick around for over half an hour, you know? Look at it again. Do an image search and see if you can find any lens flares that look like this. If I saw this without knowing it was in our skies, like a telescope photo of outer space, I'd say definitely this was a planet or moon or some other type of heavenly body. I'd probably rule out lens flare without having to think about it.

For comparison this image, taken from the same day a few frames later shows lens flares. For the record these are definitely lens flares but up until a few years ago are different from any I've seen in the past. Typically the lens flares I recall were mostly iridescent circles in prismatic colors but mostly red and blue. They tend to follow along one or more of the axes in an "X" pattern that fans out. Sometimes there are multiple flares with smaller ones near the source (usually the Sun) with larger ones further away.
 It's just an observation and doesn't have anything to do with whether or not I think there could be other planets nearby, although for the record I do see a lot of evidence supporting the idea. In any case what a coincidence that I'd be doing a post about interesting things in the sky and right in the middle click over and see an interesting thing in the sky. Ta-da.

Before I go here's a photo my friend George from California took and sent me a couple of weeks ago. This isn't a lens flare. George saw it with the naked eye. He said he didn't think it was the Moon, and as I immediately texted back, "That isn't the Moon, my friend." The night this photo was taken the Moon was maybe half-full, and in a totally different place in the sky, if it had even risen yet. To me it looks pretty much like the Moon only it isn't, so again I'd have to say it was some planetary object, and lens flare wouldn't even cross my mind. In any case it's an incredible photo; lens flare, phenomenon or whatever.
 Strange things are being seen in the sky. These pics are just the tip of the iceberg. There are hundreds of videos and thousands of images of some seriously strange phenomena in the sky. Again, right off the bat people will say that the images are 'shopped. Of course some of them are faked, but to say they all are is ludicrous. Given the thousands of images and videos, to say they're all faked means that every single person submitting an image or video would have to have not only some fairly sophisticated photo-editing software but more importantly know how to use it; much less the time and money. Come on. It's impossible.
 Another interesting thing to consider is that often within 24 hours or so any frames that show similar anomalies are simply deleted. It happens all the time and you can check the archives for yourself, which you probably won't do but I have, so you'll have to take my word for it. For example the previous sequence show four frames that show a "lens flare" or whatever it is, but if you look in the archives in the next few days those few images may be gone. The frames will still be there at ten minutes apart but the image will be gray and say "Image not available." It happens pretty much every day but there are too many images to catch every one. Isn't it interesting that those frames, and only those frames, are repeatedly deleted from the archives? Again you can check these cameras in real time for yourself. Go to "FAA webcams" and start with Alaska and see if you notice anything similar. It's interesting to see the weather in different parts of the country and some of the views are amazing. Depending on what direction and time of day you choose you can see sunrises and sunsets as well as the night sky, with all the interesting things going on there lately too. If it's overcast or raining pick another camera somewhere else. There are cameras all over the US and beyond.
 Much of the stuff can be explained but some of it can't. It's certainly like nothing we've seen in our lifetimes until recently. They can put a name on it and say it's ice crystals or Sun Dogs or "climate change" (formerly known as "global warming") or they can call it Your Granny's Fanny if they want to, since they can call it anything they damn well feel like, but the question you have to ask yourself is "Have I ever SEEN this before?" The answer is probably not. "Signs in the heavens?" Maybe.
 Take it from someone, and others like me, who have looked up at, and I suppose you could say studied the sky virtually every day and night for most of our lives, that things are getting very, very interesting up there, and they're ramping-up exponentially. Someone might actually stumble on this post and decide to have a look up and see if anything's happening, and they might see nothing. It could easily happen more than once. You never know, but I will say that if you look long enough, you WILL see something amazing. I guarantee it. Oh, and one more thing...if you haven't packed up your car with a blanket, a pickanick basket, a jug of wine, a loaf of bread and Thou (your significant) plus a doob or two, and driven out into the country at night to watch a meteor shower, you haven't lived. That I can also guarantee, no matter the generation. It's good for your soul. You need it for mental balance. You might even fall in love. The skies are getting crazy and I predict it'll get crazier. Maybe I'm wrong. Have a nice day. Heads-up.

Quote of the Day

"Nature doesn't speak any language but it's talking to us all the time." - Boyd Bushman

Sleepy

This was really a trip. To say that most of the month of July was a Sci-Fi/horror movie come to life for my family and me would be an understatement. Long story short except for one or two nights a week tops I was getting by (sort of) on three hours of sleep a night, and the rest of the time I had a million crazy-ass things going on at once. I'm in a new place now and the first night after I'd spent the grand finale of the deal moving stuff for about ten hours I'd about had it, but I could finally take a deep breath again. I was at peace.
 I was a bit manic from lack of sleep and still having a very hard time getting my head around what I'd seen with my own two good eyes. I walked out onto the deck and I was looking around like a fool and wondering what the FUCK had just happened, but the sense of relief was bigger than all that. I figured I'd sleep for three days straight (wrong), and my head was almost physically moving around in a slow circle. It was a lot like the old cartoons where the bad-guy boxer would take a hard-right to the jaw or whatever and he'd all of the sudden forget where he was or even who he was, and there'd be little tweety birds flying around his head.
 It was 10 or 11pm and I was standing with my arms on the railing; thinking I should probably go put some stuff away and whatnot except that I was so bloody tired. I was thinking "I'm so sleepy" and I happened to look down at the railing. There was just enough light to make out the word "SLEEPY" that someone with decent penmanship had carved into the wood in the past. I had to laugh and it was a perfect way to be welcomed into the new digs. I do love life's little coincidences and synchronicities. There's no telling how long it's been there but judging by the condition of the paint it could easily be a decade or more. It doesn't matter. I was thinking "Whomever you are...I feel you." I love stuff like that. Sweet dreams.