Comets and UFOs

Well, there has been great media exposure of the press conference in Washington last Monday Nov 12th. Just google for 'pilots call for ufo' and you'll get hundreds of hits - that's the Reuters report echoed around countless web sites of newspapers, blogs etc. Only a few are different - e.g. BBC. But most re-cycle the same story. Ridiculously, showing how little research these TV and newspaper people do, many of the reports showed an image of a flying disk saying it was investaged by the SSE in 1998 or more honestly, date unknown. A tiny bit of surfing and I had it -

Yes, it was the good old Vancouver Island, British Columbia, 1981 case.

Funnily enough, whilst looking for the comet last week, I saw a few things I couldn't be sure were kosher: First, looking into the eastern sky, partly clouded, suddenly a bright yellow light, bigger than a planet and brighter, shot behind a cloud and disappeared behind another one. If it was a meteor, it was the brightest one I've ever seen - it could have been a fireball: or something else. Insufficient data. Similarly, a few minutes later (it was a funny evening) looking to the Northeast, another brightish light came out of the clouds and then appeared to do aU-turn and dive back into them. It was a matter of a few seconds, so I couldn't be sure it wasn't just a plane appearing through a gap in the clouds momentarily. But simething about the thinness of hte clouds seemed to rule that out. Phew! Got it off my chest. Probably both mundane... still it was amusing to see 2 slightly weird things whilst scanning for the comet.

Leaves, Comets, animals and stars

It has been a good few autumnal days for cycling through the forest. The carpet of golden and copper leaves has become ever more sumptuous and sometimes one glides though a golden tunnel. Animals: yesterday saw a red squirrel deep in the forest, followed shortly thereafter by either a yellow woodpecker or one of that family. Then I was buzzed by a buzzard. This morning I also saw a buzzard glide a few metres before my bike: the funny thing this time was that he glided between 2 Nature Preserve (Naturschutzgebiet) signs bearing
An image of a buzzard! As if he'd flown between images of himself.

The comet and winter constellations have been fine as well, when the clouds parted to allow a glimpse. The comet was fine in my father-in-law's (God rest his soul) telescope. My daughter has become an astronomy enthusiast and was glad when I showed her how the circumpolar stars, so beloved of the Egyptians, rotated round the pole star, so that the plough, big dipper or Ursa Major was almost lost in the horizon haze in the evening, and only sank deeper into it, but in the early wintry morning it was triumphantly at the zenith, shining forth even in the early morning house lights of our town, its pointers still pointing to Polaris but now from the other side of it.

The morning had a Turkish flag of cresent moon and brilliant Venus.

The cats have been fine too Golden Romeo visiting occasionally, blending with golden leaves.