Sunday 21

Sunday 21- I did my stretches, ran a mile, lifted weights, and rode my bike.
Today’s Weather was: Temps of around 65 and 92 degrees, S-SW winds at 6 to 20, humidity around 27 percent, clear skies.
According to the National Weather Service: “Monday: Sunny, with a high near 94. Northwest wind 5 to 11 mph becoming east. Monday Night: Clear, with a low around 67. South southwest wind 7 to 13 mph becoming west northwest.”
It was kind of one of those kick back days for me. I just watered some plants, messed around the house doing this and that, fooled around with my computers reinstalling an OS on one, and read a chapter in “A Brief History of Time”. It was just a lazy day.
I went for my evening walk listening to Astronomy Cast – Ep. 135: X-Ray Astronomy. Most x-ray astronomy is done from high altitude balloons or satellites from space because or atmosphere (lucky for us) blocks most of them. X-Rays come from a number of objects; supernovas, our Sun; our Moon reflects x-rays from the Sun, neutron stars and black holes. There is an x-ray background radiation much like the Microwave Background Radiation (which happened 380 thousand years after the big bang when the universe cooled down enough to uncouple photons from protons and radiate then into space), but x-ray background isn’t well understood yet.
Kevin called and we yapped for a short spell. Then I started to watch “Impact” on ABC, but after the first five minutes of the show I was convinced that they had Al Gore as a science advisor. The show opened up with folks watching a meteor shower with telescopes! I do take my telescope out when I watch showers but that’s to look at stars or other celestial objects but not meteor showers; a few times by accident I did have a meteor zip past my telescope lens. Then the Moon gets hit by a brown dwarf! Chunks of the dwarf fall to earth in solid form and a scientist tries to pick it up! Brown dwarfs are between one and eighty Jupiter masses whose small mass failed to ignite and burn hydrogen by way of fusion reaction. Also we would detect something so massive coming our way because it would most likely affect the orbits of the planets. I threw up my arms in disgust, turned off the TV, grabbed my binoculars and went outside to gaze at the night sky. While I was doing my sky gazing I listened to Astronomy Cast – Questions: An Unlocked Moon, Energy Into Black Holes, and the Space Station’s Orbit, which made for a wonderful night of observing.
I did my stretches and went for a night run, practiced my guitar, wrote to my journal, posted it to the web, and called it a night.