krpalmer: (smeat)
krpalmer ([personal profile] krpalmer) wrote2023-10-16 06:04 pm
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In the Sky, Out of Mind (until later)

On Sunday I ran into some reports of the annular solar eclipse I’d heard a bit about having happened on Saturday. My immediate thought was to recall it had been sunny for part of that day here; had I been more aware of things beforehand I suppose I’d have tried putting a pinhole in a card and seeing if I could project the sun with a chip out of one side on another card. The total eclipse next year is supposed to pass within a reasonable travel range for me, but I don’t know if the weather will be any good then.

As I was continuing to think about that today I did make a casual visit to Wikipedia, and there I saw the space probe Psyche had launched on Friday for the metallic asteroid of the same name. (It was launched by a Falcon Heavy rocket, making it a more useful object sent out towards the asteroids than a car.) I did start wondering about not quite keeping up with the news, even if I happened to also see on the Wikipedia front page the centennial of the Disney Studio was today. Right now I am curious if the asteroid Psyche will look altogether different from any of the other asteroids viewed close up, but we won’t actually see that until the end of the decade.