March 19, 2009

Damn near the spring equinox

This is the morning of March 19, a day before the spring equinox, and I thought I better get pictures because the weather bureau says there is a good chance it will be cloudy tomorrow morning. I took this image before the real sunrise began because of the fog plopped into the valley and because of the contrails left by early morning flights.

I don't know if it is airliner Grand Central Station out there every morning, but the contrails show that kind of traffic present today. These flights are headed east, north, and south.

Here is the moment when the sun for several seconds is like a diamond on the rim of the world. You can see it is about to transit a horizon feature that we call Dolly's Right One at Five. I hope I can show you exactly where it comes up tomorrow, the actual equinox, but there may be clouds, you know.

And here is the almost-equinox moment of sunrise on the left, showing the distance across the horizon the sun has traveled since Dec. 21, when it rose out of Tut's eye, at the far right. As always, click on the image for a closer view. Then click the Back arrow to return here.

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