Author Archives: Mark P

MERRY CHRISTMAS

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Father Dogmas wishes you a very merry Christmas, with lots of biscuits and bones.

You’ve all been good little puppies I hope

If you have been naughty, you might open a present and get a surprise.

It’s about time you opened your presents! Bring me my tunas!

Father Dogmas’s little helper won’t wear a hat or socks, but he will consent to allow them nearby.

They don’t fit and I’m not fat

And at the end of a long day, Father Dogmas will take off his cape and lie down on his soft bed, accompanied by a fictitious dog in a green Christmas sweatshirt.

Don’t make me do this again, OK?

Solar halo

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When I parked at Lowe’s this morning I looked up towards the sun and saw this.

Solar halo, possibly a parhelic halo — click to enlarge

This was taken at about 11:30, so the sun was nearly at its highest point. Since it’s just at the start of winter, the sun’s highest point is pretty low in the sky. I stood so the sun was directly behind the parking lot light fixture. There was an almost complete halo around the sun. I think it was at the same angular distance from the sun as a sundog or pahelion, but since the sun is so high there was no really bright point at the sun’s elevation above the horizon. You can see that the sky is darker inside the halo, because the ice crystals don’t reflect/refract very well into angles smaller than where the halo appears. This halo was probably caused by columnar ice crystals, which orient randomly. That allows the halo to form all the way around the sun. The clouds were coming in advance of a cold front. They were just the right thickness to make the halo visible. When I came back out about 15 minutes later, the halo was no longer visible. Of course the ice crystals were still there in the clouds, and they were refracting the same way, but the thickness of the clouds had increased so I couldn’t see it on the ground.

Our Alaska trip

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Back in 2005 when Leah and I got married we took an Alaska cruise. I would never have expected to enjoy a cruise, but this was different. First, we flew to Anchorage, from where we took a train ride into the interior of Alaska for a few days. We got to stop along the way at a few interesting places, and then we went back to Anchorage and boarded the ship. The ship traveled mainly at night, stopping at several small towns for us tourists to do our thing. We thought we would share some of our pictures, a few at a time.

The plane trip had two legs. The first was from Atlanta to Seattle. We flew over Mount St. Helens just before we reached Seattle. The captain pointed it out. I might or might not have recognized the mountain otherwise. A few years earlier I had driven with some friends up to Mount St Helens, but it was so foggy we couldn’t see anything. This was actually quite a good view. Click on the pictures for larger views.

Mount St. Helens through the window of the airliner as we neared Seattle.

We spent one night in Anchorage before boarding the train for our trip inland. This was in late May, so the nights were not long. The hotel had really thick curtains to darken the room. It was broad daylight when we went to bed.

The mountains viewed from the train.

The train trip was fun, even not including the side trips for sightseeing. But we always knew there was one great, big sight awaiting at the turnaround point of our inland trip. I’m cheating a little here, because I could take pictures only out the side windows or from the last car, looking back from where we had been. So the only way I could get this shot was to take it as we left to return to Anchorage.

Denali, the Mountain formerly known as Mount McKinley

The highest mountain in North America is every bit as impressive as you might expect. This is a view from the lodge where we spent the night before a bus ride into the park for a closer view. We got closer, but close is a relative term in Alaska.

We’ll put up some more pictures later. I hope you enjoy them.

Friday Felines

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Will he smile?

We finally got caught up enough to post a Friday Feline on Friday.

Smokey seemed confused that morning. Or did he think we were confused? I kept expecting him to disappear, all but the smile.