Feb

21

The round number is never a penumbra.

Jeff Watson adds:

The umbra I noticed in South Florida was an oval shape, and considerably darkened the full moon surface. I attribute the oval shape to my different point of view, being thousands of miles from the area where the total eclipse would be complete. However, I was blessed with the clearest, most detailed view of the moon's surface I've ever seen with my little Newtonian. Although I saw the same event as the rest of the people on this continent, I got a whole different observation, and a different set of data from other observers 1000 miles away. Applying this to markets, One can look at a market from one perspective and arrive at a quite different conclusion from someone viewing the exact same event elsewhere. It's up to the speculators to bring the different pictures together to form a composite that is acceptable to all.

Scott Brooks recalls:

During the eclipse, a friend from Anchorage called me. He's getting ready to ship out to Iraq. We talked about the eclipse and what I was seeing. It was just after 9 pm cst. It was only a bit past 6 in Anchorage and not yet fully dark. So they didn't get a good view of the eclipse at all.

The kids and I did enjoy it very much. Since it was too cold to stand outside for very long, we went inside to get a break from the cold and I gave them a demonstration of how the eclipse worked using a ceiling light (the sun), a basketball (the earth), and a white jar of handcreme (the moon).

I moved the handcreme back and forth under the basketball…..and it gave a great visual representation of the the eclipse looked like as you could really see the shadow of the earth (the basketball) move over the moon (the handcreme). I actually did this from several angles with the kids to show them the difference between a full and partial eclipse. It was actually pretty cool to see the expressions on their face as they "got it" (although I'm not sure my 6 year old daughter completely grasped it).

We then went out and looked at the moon again and they saw it differently than they had before. David and Hunter even decided to try and figure out where the sun was in relation to us at that time. They figured that if they pointed to the moon with their right arm, then angled their bodies so that their right arm was at a 90 degree angle with their body and then pointed with their left arm, in the exact opposite direction such that their left arm was also at a 90 degree angle, they were pointing at the sun.

I think David (13) got it and understood that the sun was "in that direction. But Hunter (9), walked over to the spot on the ground where he had just pointed and stood there and asked "so the suns here?" (thinking it was directly below where he was standing. I'll give David credit for trying to explain to Hunter and Abbey (11) too that the "line" they were creating to point at the sun continued thru the earth and didn't just stop at that spot on the ground. I'm not sure if they got it, but it was fun watching David trying to explain it to them.

So Lydia (6) went and stood on the spot on our deck where Hunter had pointed to "where the sun was". She announced that it was just as cold "where the sun was"…….thats when I noticed that she was standing outside barefoot. That was the catalyst send us back inside.

We went back to our bedroom and tried to use the ceiling light/basketball/handcreme combo to explain what David was trying to explain. I don't think it worked.

By now it was bed time. We got the kids tucked in and Gwen and I got ready for bed ourselves. A few minutes later, I went out to see what was going on with the eclipse and noticed that there was a beautiful crescent shadow from the earth covering a portion of the moon. It looked pretty cool, so I ran upstairs to get the girls and downstairs to get the boys and took them all outside (barefoot and in jammies/skivvies) to see the eclipse.

They all thought it was pretty cool…..pretty cool that they got to get out of bed. They acted facinated by the eclipse, but I sense it was a ruse on their part to get to stay up for a while longer.

After a few minutes out in the cold (kids will tolerate a lot to be able to stay up), I dispatched them back to bed.

It was a good evening at the Brooks household!

Paolo Pezzutti writes:

Spin-orbit period coupling concerns other pairs satellite/planet in our solar system.

I wonder what market spin orbit coupling in addition to Nikkei/SP there might be in the market universe. How about various micro relationships spinning about price change?

Russ Sears discovers:

Daily Google close, modulo 100:GOOG

Makes a nice orbit if you graph, flipping it back at 49.99…


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1 Comment so far

  1. George Parkanyi on February 23, 2008 12:26 pm

    ANOTHER OBSERVATION ABOUT THE MOON

    In 1984, when I was working on the satellite launch of Telesat’s Anik C1 satellite in Perth, Australia, I was sitting on some rocks by the beach one night smoking a cigar and listening to the waves lapping up onto the beach and feeling the warm Indian Ocean sea-breeze caressing its way inland. I was watching the reflection of moonlight on the water shimmering in from the west, and then glanced up at the moon itself.

    Then it all fell into place. In the Southern hemisphere, the the contrast of the white and dark-grey areas of the moon make a perfect yin-yang symbol. You don’t quite see it in the North because of the rotation of your viewing angle, but in the South it’s very distinct. I’m convinced now that this is where the symbol comes from.

    I don’t remember if it was the same night, but I was again smoking a cigar by the beach at night, when I saw the most amazing meteorite came streaking across the sky. It was so large and bright that it actually wavered as it was slowing down. I watched it disappear over the desert horizon to the east and it actually ended in a flash. I don’t know if it flamed out in the sky or hit the ground, but it was really incredible. The most distinct colour was green.

    Cheers
    GP

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