www.ukbutterflies.co.uk

Shades of Wicker Man?

Mike

Shades of Wicker Man?

I had to look that up.

Jack

Jack Harrison wrote:Jigsaw Puzzle

...Chequered Skipper. 63 piece puzzle.....

Thank's Jack, I enjoyed that !
Its a good job that you don't have to rotate the pièces as well
Chris

Big SLRs in the wrong hands

I was returning yesterday from the mainland and leaning over the rail of the ferry hoping for a good sunset.
But it was disappointing.

A woman was also leaning over the rail holding her 5 kilogram thousand-pound DSLR to photograph the sunset and raised the flash which of course fired when she snapped.

I made a comment about how powerful the flash must be to illuminate the distant land. She simply didn't understand and looked at me in complete bewilderment.

Jack

I'm sure that everyone on UKB will join me in wishing Jack a very Happy Birthday today.
He is not expecting anybody to remember

Vince

Happy Birthday, Jack. That's two before 6am!
Best Wishes, Neil

Hi Jack,
I'm not sure that eating birthday cake is recommended before breakfast but I hope you have a very
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ! (6:22am )
Best Wishes,
Philip

Happy Birthday, Jack!

Cheers,

- Pete

Happy birthday Jack, from the South of France. I wish you good health for the coming year.
Cheers, Chris

Many happy returns of the day, Jack. Go easy on the single malt ...

Guy

All the best, Jack. Many happy returns.

Happy Birthday !

Happy B'day Jack.

Have a goodun

Wurzel

Happy birthday Jack, hope it was a good one.

Cheers,

Neil.

Best wishes for a great day, Jack!

Dave

A day late, but I nearly remembered, happy birthday Jack, hope you had a good one

Regards Gruditch

Evenings drawing out Ref an earlier discussion

Here on Mull, earliest sunset was on 15th December. On the equator, it was approx 1st November. (and in between for latitudes between zero and 56N)

It may seem strange that earliest sunset is not on the shortest day (that is 21s December). This is because the Earth’s axis is tilted and the orbit is not a perfect circle.

Good explanation for those interested here:

http://www.theguardian.com/notesandquer ... 85,00.html

BTW thanks to for the birthday wishes some ten days ago.

Jack

BBC posted about this today:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30549149

Precise time of solstice is 2303 GMT.

For interest, South Pole webcam:

http://www.usap.gov/videoclipsandmaps/spwebcam.cfm

Every direction you look is north!

Jack

Spotted that myself earlier today, Jack.

I had always wanted a better understanding of how mornings continued to get darker after 21st December.

There's another simple reason for sunrises/sunsets not being symmetrical, which doesn't depend on axis tilt or an elliptical orbit.

During the roughly 365 days in a year, the earth rotates on its axis 366 times. The difference is the result of the earth completing an orbit around the sun. (i.e. if the earth didn't rotate at all, we would still experience one 'day' per year) Between each sunrise and sunset, a small part of this 'orbital' day passes, which corresponds to a few minutes during each 'rotation' day.

Mike
EDITED after Jack Harrison pointed out I did my sums backwards!!!