Friday, March 30, 2012

Unexpected Rainbow

This post is for Ian Astroblogger's pursuit of unexpected architectural rainbows.
http://astroblogger.blogspot.com.au/search/label/rainbows

I had to get my car serviced the other day, so after an early morning walk into the city along the river for some CBD shopping.
damm, no early morning comets to be seen...

On the way back, I had stopped for a noon day pale ale at The Boat builders Yard which sits on the south side of the river near the Melbourne exhibition centre, that's not me in the picture obviously...


A shimmer of colour caught my eye. it seems to be coming from a reflection of the sun on the river. 


I am not sure how this rainbow it being created as I am viewing it through a glass sheet near the walkway, so is it  a reflection from the glass to the river and back from the river to me?...the glass sheet may be acting as the prism.

And as an observation of how unexpected things can happen, I had just brought a set of three prisms from this very interesting store in Melbourne. www.wunderkammer.com.au , I am intending to make a basic Amici prism spectrascope, just for fun....

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

New SWAN Comet

A newly discovered Kreutz comet as seen in STEREO HI1B.
Lovejoy is right , SWAN-VB is left.
This SWAN comet is approaching the sun now and unlikely to survive.
Interesting tail dynamics as a CME  passes by.
A split tail results, ION's and Dust?
The SWAN comet fades away on close approach to the sun.