Thursday's Blog on Friday Morning - No Aurora
We had some technical difficulties with multiple copies of our blog late on Thursday night. We had to delete the extra copies. And when we logged on this Friday morning, we found to our surprise that the published copy had also managed to be deleted as well. So we are reposting this entry with the trepidation that the original copy might somehow be floating in some interstice and could come back to visit again.
In the wee hours of Thursday, we dragged ourselves out from our warm repose (actually very warm, temperatures are over 100 the last 5 days or so) into the cool night air. We slowly floated out of our covers and down the hall to look up at the northern Texas sky. We saw a couple of planets, some twinkling stars, a waning crescent moon cast a dim glow over the My-Lynx Associates headquarters. We were tiptoeing around not wanting to awaken the neighbors to our unearthly preoccupation with the Aurora Borealis. We saw that another Texas blogger had gotten a spectacular photo of the atmospheric glow of the Aurora, so we had high hopes of at least seeing some light in the sky. There was a thin layer of high cirrus clouds here and there as moisture from the Texas Gulf migrated inland, but it only promised a hint of coming rain, a microscopic chance of showers today, which never materialized beyond a few scudding clouds and thin streamers of cirrus.
We stared for a while up and down the tree-lined street to the north, but nothing was apparent. Was it the brilliant light of the sodium vapor lamps, those brilliant sentinels that bring a golden yellow light to the ground and sky both? Did the illumination dim the celestial display with its dazzling and overwhelming localized light, that shines up into the sky as well and makes all but the brightest stars invisible? We cannot say. It could be the hilly terrain locally, which obscures the movements of heavenly objects to a narrow range overhead and to the South. We searched in vain, and returned to our torpor, and with thoughts of rare volumes of books and out-of-print bargains yet to be put online, we tossed and turned until almost dawn. As the faint light of dawn broke, we once again looked northward to catch a glimpse of the tell-tale sign of what the astronomers term a MCE or Mass Coronal Ejection. A giant chunk of the sun's plasma was thrown into space several days ago, and the highly charged energetic particles of the solar sphere itself have been racing towards the Earth's magnetic field, where interacting with the different gases in the upper reaches of the atmosphere has treated summer viewers (we wonder where they are since many of them are in the land of the midnight sun, but anyway those who experience a little night would have been able to see the display.
We awoke later in the morning to process our book orders from around the nation and around the world, perhaps again we will watch the darkened skies once more in the fond hope of seeing this rare celestial display. We see that the media in some of the local stations is trying to alarm the public by playing to the ignorance of the risk-averse. We actually found a television web page that asked the rhetorical question: "Are we in danger?" from the "Solar Tsunami". They must stay up later than we do at night trying to dream that stuff up during the slow news cycles of August when all the decision makers have fled to their vacation abodes.
The only danger we anticipate is a slip on the lawn from the heavy dew on the lawn of our world-wide headquarters as we slink around the property in the hope of catching a glimpse of the glowing celestial lights. And we say slink because we will be in our evening work uniform of t-shirt and pyjamas in case we need to check for your book orders before the break of day. We work around the clock for our international patrons. We just rest our eyes occasionally for a cat-nap now and again. But perhaps some of the neighboring observers may not be so understanding so we will tiptoe.
Our restless night and other worldly concerns reduced our output today. Here is a sample of our new merchandise from the personal collection of a former local municipal official. Read more at the picture-link below:
In the wee hours of Thursday, we dragged ourselves out from our warm repose (actually very warm, temperatures are over 100 the last 5 days or so) into the cool night air. We slowly floated out of our covers and down the hall to look up at the northern Texas sky. We saw a couple of planets, some twinkling stars, a waning crescent moon cast a dim glow over the My-Lynx Associates headquarters. We were tiptoeing around not wanting to awaken the neighbors to our unearthly preoccupation with the Aurora Borealis. We saw that another Texas blogger had gotten a spectacular photo of the atmospheric glow of the Aurora, so we had high hopes of at least seeing some light in the sky. There was a thin layer of high cirrus clouds here and there as moisture from the Texas Gulf migrated inland, but it only promised a hint of coming rain, a microscopic chance of showers today, which never materialized beyond a few scudding clouds and thin streamers of cirrus.
We stared for a while up and down the tree-lined street to the north, but nothing was apparent. Was it the brilliant light of the sodium vapor lamps, those brilliant sentinels that bring a golden yellow light to the ground and sky both? Did the illumination dim the celestial display with its dazzling and overwhelming localized light, that shines up into the sky as well and makes all but the brightest stars invisible? We cannot say. It could be the hilly terrain locally, which obscures the movements of heavenly objects to a narrow range overhead and to the South. We searched in vain, and returned to our torpor, and with thoughts of rare volumes of books and out-of-print bargains yet to be put online, we tossed and turned until almost dawn. As the faint light of dawn broke, we once again looked northward to catch a glimpse of the tell-tale sign of what the astronomers term a MCE or Mass Coronal Ejection. A giant chunk of the sun's plasma was thrown into space several days ago, and the highly charged energetic particles of the solar sphere itself have been racing towards the Earth's magnetic field, where interacting with the different gases in the upper reaches of the atmosphere has treated summer viewers (we wonder where they are since many of them are in the land of the midnight sun, but anyway those who experience a little night would have been able to see the display.
We awoke later in the morning to process our book orders from around the nation and around the world, perhaps again we will watch the darkened skies once more in the fond hope of seeing this rare celestial display. We see that the media in some of the local stations is trying to alarm the public by playing to the ignorance of the risk-averse. We actually found a television web page that asked the rhetorical question: "Are we in danger?" from the "Solar Tsunami". They must stay up later than we do at night trying to dream that stuff up during the slow news cycles of August when all the decision makers have fled to their vacation abodes.
The only danger we anticipate is a slip on the lawn from the heavy dew on the lawn of our world-wide headquarters as we slink around the property in the hope of catching a glimpse of the glowing celestial lights. And we say slink because we will be in our evening work uniform of t-shirt and pyjamas in case we need to check for your book orders before the break of day. We work around the clock for our international patrons. We just rest our eyes occasionally for a cat-nap now and again. But perhaps some of the neighboring observers may not be so understanding so we will tiptoe.
Our restless night and other worldly concerns reduced our output today. Here is a sample of our new merchandise from the personal collection of a former local municipal official. Read more at the picture-link below:
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