As the snow is looming...

[Philadelphia]

Here's a bit of advice:
Winter tyres, people! They're not so much an expense as they are an investment in safety. And it doesn't have to be the way it is now for them to work better than regular ones, even with rain and temperature of up to +5 they give you a better grip when you drive.

I hope everyone gets to enjoy the snow, despite the trouble it's causing.

[Brom]

I got to Heathrow on Sunday, woke up to find no planes, no trains and no way to go anywhere. The prospect of being stuck there not able to make a snowman was rather depressing.

Luckily I managed to get onto a flight that was leaving. There was a lot of hanging about, but we finally got going, one of the few!!

There's no snow here, not one flake.

[johninblack]

There's no snow here, not one flake.

None here either, It's all melted and gone.

[Ash]

You're welcome to the tons that is still in Sarf London, I like it when it snows and then is gone the next day, like it has in recent years.  The sludge n ice for a week after is very annoying.  WW appears to have suffered from this today.  

Re winter tyres - is there a point when snow like this doesn't normally happen in my little part of the World?  Excuse my ignorance in anything car related, I was quite impressed with myself (but broke) when I bought new tyres before Xmas and that was only because one had a slow puncture.

[Nellie]

Venus, I believe.

It is Venus. And we have a comet in our midst. Low in the horizon to the east, it's pretty faint, but you should be able to see it with binoculars for all of Feb.

Astronomy. Just so rocks.

Funny you should mention that; I've been wondering whether you had an astronomical bent, Jem (as opposed to an astronomically bent Jem).

Indeed, it has been tickling my fancy to see if you'd be interested in putting together a little commission to launch a rocket to one day. A pretty frakking serious rocket at that ...

I like the rocket idea.
However, if it's Venus, why has it been on the exact same orbit and the same place in the sky for at least 6 weeks? Hmmmm?
(PS Jem is bent)xx

[Trapezium Artist]

I like the rocket idea.
However, if it's Venus, why has it been on the exact same orbit and the same place in the sky for at least 6 weeks? Hmmmm?
(PS Jem is bent)xx

Well, if you look carefully, it hasn't: it has been moving relative to the background stars fairly quickly. It's just that at this particular point in its orbit around the Sun, as viewed from the Earth (it's a slightly complicated perspective problem, because the Earth and Venus are both orbiting the Sun with different orbital periods, with Venus catching the Earth up and passing us as it whizzes around closer to the Sun), it's not moving very quickly with respect to the Sun.

What you're saying then is right in a sense: relative to the Sun or relative to the time of evening as judged by time after sunset, Venus has been more or less stationary. That is, if you have been looking just after the Sun had set each evening, Venus would have appeared to be pretty much at the same place in the sky or relative to your greenhouse (or Tardis if you're Jem) for the last few weeks: in this guise, Venus is known as the Evening Star (or Hesperus). However, if you'd looked at the stars closely, Venus and the Sun have been moving along together relative to them.

Indeed, this will continue to be roughly true until the end of February or so, at which point the interplay of the orbits of Venus and the Earth will result in Venus apparently moving back towards the Sun, i.e. visible lower in the sky and closer to the Sun at sunset until, around mid-March or so, when they'll be so close that Venus won't be visible.

By the beginning of May, Venus will be at at roughly the same large distance on the side of the Sun. It should be easy to figure out, after a little head-scratching, that Venus will then adopt its other guise, the Morning Star (Eosphorus, or Phosphorus, or Lucifer), which fewer people see, particularly astronomers like me, 'cos we're night-owls

A particularly nice tool for visualising all this is Google Earth, which can be turned inside out to look at the sky. It allows you to run the clock backwards and forwards on a slider, and thus see how the planets are moving relative to the Sun and each other.

I used it quite a lot a few weeks ago when we had several clear nights in a row. I took my binoculars out each night and spotted Jupiter, Venus, Uranus, and Neptune: the latter two are quite faint and very hard to distinguish from stars, but by watching how they moved against nearby fixed stars each night, I could confirm that it was definitely them I was seeing.

Lecture mode off  

(p.s. How do you know Jem is bent? Pictures please ... or then again ...)

[Nellie]

Flippin' Nora. I honestly didn't expect a proper answer and now I am sending you a virtual squeeze! Thanks.
I know lots of things, some of them are true and some of them are believable. There is a recently posted (by me) picture of a very young Jem having his hair highlighted. I suppose it also depends on how one interprets "bent".

[Trapezium Artist]

Flippin' Nora. I honestly didn't expect a proper answer and now I am sending you a virtual squeeze! Thanks.
I know lots of things, some of them are true and some of them are believable. There is a recently posted (by me) picture of a very young Jem having his hair highlighted. I suppose it also depends on how one interprets "bent".

Ah, gratefully accepted (it's cooling down rapidly in my office this evening)  

I've given two lectures today, so was in the appropriate frame of mind, it seems. And given the estimable and highly enviable talents exhibited by very many of the Frosties on this forum, the least I can do is pitch in when areas of my own expertise pop up now and then.

But Jem and hair: should these words be in the same sentence?  :roll: (I speak as someone equally follically challenged).

[Nellie]

Quite right! You should share.
Pics are on the "Announcements/I'd like to announce" thread. They're about 20 years old so the quality is not good but they are funny. Johnny Boyes is also featured. :lol: