Cosmos Computed

The actual sun appeared bright red, but my camera picked up some invisible radiation as violet. This photo was not enhanced. Last year was very dry. Wildfires raged through the state, and a firework ban on Independence Day made everybody even more sorry about the lack of water. I think this summer is turning out to be a repeat. So far we've had 3 historically significant fires: the  Black Forest Fire , which burned 14,280 acres and was the most destructive ever recorded in Colorado (in terms of property damage); the Royal Gorge Fire , which burned 3,800 acres and jumped the Royal Gorge; and the West Fork Complex , which is still burning 0% contained, and has so far burned more than 83,004 acres. Photos of an affected area, arranged  in chronological order. Just today, we watched a wildfire almost in our backyard, and saw the firefighters putting it out. We packed up in case we had to evacuate, but they got it under control and put it out. They had a helicopter with a water basket h

Six days ago, a fire started in Black Forest, Colorado. The wind was very strong, and the fire quickly grew to become the most destructive fire in the history of Colorado. The smoke cloud looks a lot like this cumulus cloud; both were formed from warm rising air. That afternoon, I was able photograph the smoke cloud. You can see one of my photos at the top of this post. Notice the lighter area near the top of the cloud; that's caused by water vapor condensing out of the smoke. The following day, the air where we live was full of smoke from the fire. Then the wind changed and blew the smoke away, and we had fresh air for a while. That night, we were smoked out again. Wind that keeps changing over a wildfire can be bad. As we later learned, the fire had turned around and burned areas that had originally been spared. Not good. As of today, the fire is still burning, 75% contained. It has so far destroyed at least 483 homes and partially damaged 16 homes. Luckily, only 2 people were ki

I recently sent a letter to Astronomy magazine about one of the articles in the April 2013 issue. The article was titled Astro April Fools  and was written by the columnist Bob Berman. I didn't like how lightly Bob treated Y2K, so I wrote the following letter: I have been a subscriber to Astronomy magazine for about 3 or 4 years, since I was about 12. Probably my favorite part of Astronomy magazine is Bob Berman's Strange Universe. However, in the April 2013 issue, Bob seems to treat Y2K a little too lightly. Although not as bad as advertised, there really were dangers; computers really did fail, and bad things did happen. Caption: A French sign displaying an inaccurate date because of the Y2K bug. Image taken from Wikipedia. Think about a normal computer problem, like the one that happened a few weeks ago: an airline's computers were down for only a couple of hours, but it cost them thousands of dollars. When something like this happens, the computer can be reset; once the