Log of SV Wendaway

Ski hut in Norway under Northern Lights - Per Ivar Somby

The photo-sharing site Flickr is amazing.

This evening I read a news article about  a powerful solar storm that is producing problems for planes and cellphones,  and brilliant skies filled with spectral colors in the high latitudes.

Those of us in tropical latitudes are missing this  rare spectacle -  a display of  aurora borealis -   caused by a massive solar flare. But enough of that.  I knew that Flickr – with its thousands of committed photographers – would have produced a worldwide record of the event almost instantaneously.  And I was right. Continue Reading »

Waxing crescent

Let’s say you’ve been waiting for the waxing crescent moon to arrive.  You have your reasons.

If you started waiting  precisely at  noon on the very day of the new moon,  it would mean that for a couple of  nights you might see nothing.  But very few people would start their vigil on the precise moment of the birth of the new moon, which happens more or less at noon at the astronomical moment of the start of the lunar calendar, according to scientific convention.

I know, it’s complicated.

Waiting for it to get dark,  you’d look up and of course there would be no moon.  If the sky was clear,  if you were in the mountains with no city lights to obscure even a faint fingernail of a moon,  as darkness fell there would be no light from the moon.  If you were on the ocean,  waiting to see the moon,  there would be no moonglades, as my brother Neal calls them. Continue Reading »

Simulation of the final moments of the Costa Concordia

Here is a very interesting conjecture from the Polish navigation technology firm NavSim, in the graphic to the left (and many thanks to John for the tip!)

It is a simulation of the final minutes of the Costa Concordia, and if essentially correct, tells a story about what accident investigators call ” a lapse of situational awareness”.

I used to think that the term was used as a euphemism for drunkenness in the cockpit.  And that may not be far off the mark in this interesting tragedy.

Continue Reading »

Costa Concordia: not so prudent

This article has been rewritten incorporating emerging facts.

Please click here.