|
|
|
|
|
 |
Tuesday, December 03, 2002 |
|
News - I got out and observed the sky (briefly) last night for the first time in several weeks. Comment - Zowie, it was cold! It had a significant effect on the performance of my telescope. I should have let my scope sit in the garage for a couple hours so it could reach thermal equilibrium with the outside temperature. Instead, I took it out to the driveway on the spur-of-the-moment. I went from 70 degrees inside to zero outside! That was way too much of a difference for the scope to be able to adapt and give me a good optical performance. I took my first looks with this scope at the Orion Nebula (http://www.seds.org/messier/m/m042.html) and Saturn (http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/nineplanets/nineplanets/saturn.html), but it was like looking through the bottom of a glass of water. News - Undersea explorers say Nazi super-battleship Bismarck was scuttled by its crew, not sunk by gunfire: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/03/science/03BISM.html Comment - This will be the subject of a TV special on Sunday. I don't see what difference it makes, whether it was destroyed by British warships or forced to be sunk. The important thing at the time is that it was destroyed. There were only 115 survivors out of the crew of 2,200. I've read in history books that one of Hitler's many military mistakes is that he wasted money and resources on showy ships like the Bismarck, when building more submarines would have been much more effective for the war effort in the long run. I also read that during the battle with the Bismarck, one of the British battleships fired so many shells that it was in danger of literally shaking itself to pieces. Click here to see current comments and add your own. 11:41:10 AM 
|
 |
 |
|
 |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||