ICYMI News – Saturday Morning Edition

Canary. Photo by 4028mdk09.

(Note: Sorry for the late post this morning. Ran into some technical problems, but seems to be cleared up now.)

Science

NOAA has this really cool interactive tool “to view and download real-time, full-resolution satellite imagery.”

Here it is being put to use to view the widespread power outages caused by Hurricane Michael.

Remember the humanoid robot named Atlas that is basically a meme now days? Live Science reported yesterday, “the robotics company Boston Dynamics posted a new video on YouTube showcasing the robot’s latest progress, carrying it past its prior agility goals in leaps and bounds – literally.”

Atlas can now do parkour.

Boston Dynamics
YouTube
Published Oct 11 2018

Space

Check out this cool capture of SpaceX‘s launch October 7. This is what people in downtown Los Angeles saw that night.

Nature

Cloud iridescence or “irisation is a colorful optical phenomenon that occurs in a cloud and appears in the general proximity of the Sun or Moon,’ with colors that “are usually pastel, but can be very vivid or mingled together, sometimes similar to mother-of-pearl.”

But this description didn’t seem to describe what I was seeing in the video. After looking at other pictures it was quickly becoming more obvious we may have a case of mistaken identity because no matter how awesome some of those pictures are, it just wasn’t fitting, so I ventured out further and ended up at EarthSky.

Iridescent cloud? Or circumhorizon arc?

George Preoteasa had an answer for us. He said he’d also mistakenly identified one sky phenomenon for the other, and so made a study of how to tell them apart. George wrote:

The circumhorizon arc is a band parallel to the horizon. So, to the extent that the horizon is an arc, this is one, too. The colors in a circumhorizon arc are well organized, red at the top, indigo at the bottom. With cloud iridescence, the colors are more randomly distributed.

Circumhorizon arcs have a certain fuzziness. They are caused by ice
crystals in cirrus clouds, much as solar and lunar halos are. Iridescence, on the other hand, is caused by water droplets.

For a circumhorizon arc to occur, the sun must be high up, over 58 degrees above the horizon. Iridescence usually occurs close to the sun, which makes it difficult to photograph. You need to hide the sun so that sunlight does not overwhelm the colors in the cloud.

EarthSky; July 30 2018

Dude, Rhode Island? Who knew? This is just funny, I don’t care who you are.

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