CALIFORNIA FIREBALL: A remarkable fireball blazed across Califonia on Dec. 27th around 1:50 am PST. Its brilliant blue-green light caught the attention of onlookers (some inside their homes) all the way from San Francisco Bay in the north to the Los Angeles metropolitan area in the south--a range of more than 340 miles. According to one account, the object exploded with a thunderous boom, producing a spray of golden-colored fragments. Readers, if you witnessed or photographed this fireball, please submit a report. SHADOWS OF VENUS: The legend is true. Venus is bright enough to cast shadows. The silhouette on this white screen is framed by the light of the Goddess of Love: Play the movie: 3 MB Quicktime French photographer Laurent Laveder took the picture and here he explains how it was done: "On Christmas evening, I went to the beach to capture the inconspicuous shadows cast by Venus. I positioned my camera (a Canon 40D) between Venus and the screen and then I made several 30 second exposures at 1600 ISO with a Sigma 30mm lens open at 1.4. The camera's shadow showed up quite nicely." Stitching together consecutive exposures, Laveder created a must-see movie. It shows the shadow moving up as Venus descends into the waves behind the camera. Readers, now is the time to catch your own Venus shadow. The Moon is new; so the only light in dark places after sunset belongs to Venus herself. Give it a try. NACREOUS CLOUDS: The nacreous cloud show continues over Scandinavia. "The view tonight was among the most beautiful I've ever seen!" says veteran sky photographer P-M Hedén of Tänndalen, Sweden. "The cloud formations and colors were absolutely lovely." He snapped these sunset photos using a Canon 450D: Nacreous or "mother of pearl" clouds are made of microscopic ice crystals floating in the stratosphere 9 to 16 miles high. These clouds gather when the temperature in the polar stratosphere drops below -85 C. Because of that numbing threshold, they tend to appear only during winter over cold places such as Scandinavia, Alaska and Iceland. Nacreous clouds are supposed to be rare, yet sky watchers in Scandinavia has spotted them frequently during the past two weeks. Could this be a "nacreous storm"? A similar, mysterious abundance of nacreous clouds occurred in January 2008; it could be happening again. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for mother of pearl during the twilight hours after sunset or before sunrise. Dec. 2008 Nacreous Cloud Gallery [January 2008 Gallery] [Nacreous tutorial] |