|
|
Tuesday, November 19, 2002
|
|
| |
In Central New Jersey we have thin cloud cover with a few breaks. Unfortunately the full moon is illuminating the cloud base and thirty minutes of observing from 3:45 to 4:15 local produced a single bright Leonid meteor trail. I'm going to try again in an hour around the projected peak of the storm.
Reports from the first peak over Europe look very encouraging (15 meteors/minute in some places).
4:21:47 AM 
|
|
A wonderful science demonstrator is Atom in a Box. This does H up to n = 7 and offers a very nice intuitive display. Anyone who has had a very brief introduction to Quantum Mechanics will love it and anyone else will like the beautiful display.
Another neat little program is Stellarium.. A multiplatform sky simulator it is useful for those learning about finding the stars and planets. It won't replace the tools for serious amateurs, but the price is right.
4:18:55 AM
|
|
A bit of weirdness in the form of a system monitor for Mac OS X users. The user interface is - er - unusual.
4:18:39 AM
|
|
If you want to find out who is giving what to which politician opensecrets.org is a great site. A bit of searching by zipcode will reveal contributions to a fairly small level. A neighbor who is taken with rather loud letters to the editor is a heavy NRA contributor. A company I used to be with strongly favors the Republicans and a retired surgeon gave to Paul Wellstone's campaign.
4:18:20 AM
|
|
|
|
|
