Tag: Sky

Light from street, Moon and planet

The Moon hangs in the sky to the right of the house, and it’s 390 million km away, so light takes 1.3 seconds or so to make that trip.

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Image 118 – What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every day or so.

Enlarge

This photo is of the northern end of Gloucester Street, seen from the eastern side of the River Churn, close to Abbey Way Services.

You’ll notice several sources of light. Light travels at a little over 1 billion km/h, 1.079 billion if you want to be a little more precise. Like anything in motion at a steady speed, you can express distances in terms of travel time. If I fly a helicopter in a straight line to London at 100 km/h and it takes me an hour, then the distance to London must have been 100 km. If it takes only 30 minutes, then the distance was 50 km. You get the idea.

The streetlight, the house and the car are all around 20 m away (or 0.020 km), and doing the arithmetic shows that light would take around 80 billionths of a sec to make that trip.

The Moon hangs in the sky to the right of the house, and it’s 390 million km away, so light takes 1.3 seconds or so to arrive from the Moon.

The planet Venus is visible near the top of the photo, and as I write Venus is about 111 million km away, a distance that light covers in just over 6 minutes.

For comparison, our nearest neighbouring star, Proxima Centauri, is so far away, that its light takes 4¼ years to reach us. Space is BIG!

When: 2nd January 2025
Where: Gloucester Street, Cirencester

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Cirencester

For convenience, here’s a list of all the Cirencester area images:

A417 roadworks, Advent Market, Bishops Walk, Baunton, Canal 1, 2, Castle Street, Christmas lights 1, 2, Church 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Churn flood, Countryside, Fallen tree, Fleece, Gasworks, Gloucester Street, Hare 1, 2, Hospital, Market Place 1, Phoenix Fest, Riverside Walk, Stone plaque, Stratton Meadow, Tank traps, View, Wonky 1, 2, Yellow Iris

Themed image collections

The links below will take you to the first post in each collection

Cirencester, Favourites, Irish holiday 2024, Roman villa

Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome!

Cotswold skies

One of the joys of these walks is the sky. Sometimes it’s grey and overcast, sometimes it’s blue from horizon to horizon, but sometimes it’s full of interesting cloud formations at various heights.

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Image 103 – What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every day or so.

Larger view

Traditional Cotswold fields were quite small, but as in many parts of the UK, farmers have removed hedgerows to combine small fields into larger ones that can be more efficiently cultivated, planted, and managed. Although this has some deleterious effects on wildlife and biodiversity, it does create some big skies. Here is an example.

This field is an easy walk west from Stratton where I live, along a permitted route along a stony track. I come out this way from time to time to enjoy the wide open spaces, to look at the nearby polo fields, to listen to the larks that nest here in considerable numbers, and to watch them rise higher and higher before plummeting down to land.

And one of the joys of these walks is the sky. Sometimes it’s grey and overcast, sometimes it’s blue from horizon to horizon, but sometimes it’s full of interesting cloud formations at various heights.

This wonderful world is full of beauty in big skies and also in tiny details. And it’s always different, no two days are alike.

When: 19th January 2024
Where: North-west of Cirencester

Favourites

For convenience, here’s a list of my favourite images:

Anemone, Cloud, Honeybee, Hydrangea, Kiftsgate1, Kiftsgate2, Large White, Mugshot, Nelson, Robin, Rose, Spilhaus, Sunset1, Weston beach

Themed image collections

The links below will take you to the first post in each collection

Cirencester, Favourites, Irish holiday 2024, Roman villa

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Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome!