Oh well, Chubs is kind of cute.
As for me, I like to sink into my warm soft bed.
WoofAbby
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Colder Nights
As the nights grow colder Chubs gets to come in to warm up and sleep on the floor. He has a bed but he likes to stay close to me.
Woof
Woof
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Holmes Grows A Tail
Holmes Comet Update:
Comet Holmes, the oddball comet that erupted into naked-eye visibility almost three weeks ago, now appears in photo imagery to have grown a tail. It's not much as comet tails go. (Here are some photos of Comet McNaught, one of the most spectacular tailed comets in recent years, but hard to see from here when it peaked.)
Holmes' tail is not apparent to the naked eye, and can't readily be seen in binoculars. But long-exposure photography does show a stubby ion tail. It's stubby because it is being blown away from the comet's nucleus - and away from the sun and Earth. So, from our perspective, it looks very short.
More recent images also suggest that a gust of solar wind has actually detached the tail from the nucleus. Here's the Holmes Photo Gallery.
Working out for the
Weiner Dog Winter Nationals
An Innovative Dog
Woof
Abby
Comet Holmes, the oddball comet that erupted into naked-eye visibility almost three weeks ago, now appears in photo imagery to have grown a tail. It's not much as comet tails go. (Here are some photos of Comet McNaught, one of the most spectacular tailed comets in recent years, but hard to see from here when it peaked.)
Holmes' tail is not apparent to the naked eye, and can't readily be seen in binoculars. But long-exposure photography does show a stubby ion tail. It's stubby because it is being blown away from the comet's nucleus - and away from the sun and Earth. So, from our perspective, it looks very short.
More recent images also suggest that a gust of solar wind has actually detached the tail from the nucleus. Here's the Holmes Photo Gallery.
Working out for the
Weiner Dog Winter Nationals
An Innovative Dog
Woof
Abby
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Holmes Comet
Comet Dog
Amateur astronomers the world over have been stunned and amazed by the weirdest new object to appear in the sky in memory. And it's one of the brightest, too — it's easy to spot with your eyes alone if you know where to look.
On October 24th, periodic Comet Holmes brightened dramatically — by nearly a million times — virtually overnight. For no apparent reason, the comet erupted from a very dim magnitude 17 to about magnitude 2½. Within a day its starlike nucleus had expanded into a perfectly round, bright little disk visible in binoculars and telescopes. It looked like no comet ever seen.Its startling outburst, however, has a precedent.
The comet was also in a major eruption 115 years ago, in November 1892, when English amateur Edwin Holmes was the first to spot it. It reached 4th or 5th magnitude, faded in the following weeks, and then underwent a second eruption 2½ months after the first.
Now, it seems, Comet Holmes has outdone itself. The first person to notice something happening, was A. Henriquez Santana at Tenerife, Canary Islands, shortly after midnight on the morning of the 24th local time.
If you haven't seen it yet, step outside after dinner tonight, and look for a narrow triangle of stars below the (sideways) W-shaped constellation Cassiopeia, but above (and slightly to the right of) the bright star Capella - the brightest in that part of the sky. Holmes is the "star" on the left side of the base of that triangle.
But trust me - it's easier just to scan the sky below Cassiopeia with your binoculars. Holmes stands out because it is NOT just a pinpoint of light like a star. It's a striking gray blob, a fuzz ball. And it really is hard to miss. Or at least it has been all this week.
Unlike most bright comets, Holmes doesn't possess a long tail. It looks just like a modestly bright star, so you'll need to use the finder chart to zero in on it. Even large telescopes reveal no details. The comet currently lies 150 million miles (245 million km) from Earth and 225 million miles (365 million km) from the Sun.
No one knows how long the outburst will last. When London observer Edwin Holmes discovered the comet in November 1892, it was also in an outburst and some 100,000 times brighter than it normally is. During that appearance, the comet faded 3 magnitudes in the course of a week.
LEARN MORE - EARTH & SKY
READ MORE ABOUT THE HOLMES COMET
Woof
Abby
Amateur astronomers the world over have been stunned and amazed by the weirdest new object to appear in the sky in memory. And it's one of the brightest, too — it's easy to spot with your eyes alone if you know where to look.
On October 24th, periodic Comet Holmes brightened dramatically — by nearly a million times — virtually overnight. For no apparent reason, the comet erupted from a very dim magnitude 17 to about magnitude 2½. Within a day its starlike nucleus had expanded into a perfectly round, bright little disk visible in binoculars and telescopes. It looked like no comet ever seen.Its startling outburst, however, has a precedent.
The comet was also in a major eruption 115 years ago, in November 1892, when English amateur Edwin Holmes was the first to spot it. It reached 4th or 5th magnitude, faded in the following weeks, and then underwent a second eruption 2½ months after the first.
Now, it seems, Comet Holmes has outdone itself. The first person to notice something happening, was A. Henriquez Santana at Tenerife, Canary Islands, shortly after midnight on the morning of the 24th local time.
If you haven't seen it yet, step outside after dinner tonight, and look for a narrow triangle of stars below the (sideways) W-shaped constellation Cassiopeia, but above (and slightly to the right of) the bright star Capella - the brightest in that part of the sky. Holmes is the "star" on the left side of the base of that triangle.
But trust me - it's easier just to scan the sky below Cassiopeia with your binoculars. Holmes stands out because it is NOT just a pinpoint of light like a star. It's a striking gray blob, a fuzz ball. And it really is hard to miss. Or at least it has been all this week.
Unlike most bright comets, Holmes doesn't possess a long tail. It looks just like a modestly bright star, so you'll need to use the finder chart to zero in on it. Even large telescopes reveal no details. The comet currently lies 150 million miles (245 million km) from Earth and 225 million miles (365 million km) from the Sun.
No one knows how long the outburst will last. When London observer Edwin Holmes discovered the comet in November 1892, it was also in an outburst and some 100,000 times brighter than it normally is. During that appearance, the comet faded 3 magnitudes in the course of a week.
LEARN MORE - EARTH & SKY
READ MORE ABOUT THE HOLMES COMET
Woof
Abby
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