Hard overnight frost, cold n.-w. wind, 9 tenths cloud cover, low cloud base, moved above freezing during day and significant breaks in cloud by 4pm. Still light then, my new ‘Humber Bridge Tide Times 2017 booklet also includes dawn and dusk times (as well as low and high tide times and heights for each day and phases of the moon), and by the weekend lighting-up time will be just after 4pm (after all we are almost 2 weeks beyond the shortest day, 1 eighteenth of the way to June 21st).
Frosty nights have allowed some star gazing, have always been able to pick-out the ‘Plough’ in the northern sky but also ‘Orion’s Belt has been clear. Always seems strange that astronomers still speak of constellations which are, of course, a product of man’s imagination (and have a big link with astrology), apparently there is an official astronomical list. The 3 stars of ‘Orion’s Belt’ only have a relationship one with another from the perspective of planet Earth, they are at varying light-years from Earth and from each other.
The star-lit sky is one of the joys of winter as are the vapour trails of passenger aircraft silhouetted against a cloudless sky on a frosty afternoon. I like to see them and wonder where they are going – but I don’t want to be in one and passengers should pay a much higher fuel levy, and why not if they can afford to be up there.