Saturday 17 April 2010

No Contrails

As most of you probably know, a volcano has gone off in Iceland, grounding all planes in most of Northern Europe.

Apart from a lot of quite funny jokes about people trying to pronounce the volcano's name, and about sending Iceland money to turn the volcano off (let's face it those Icelanders deserve a laugh) that means eerily quiet skies over London, and this shot of the Moon and what I presume to be Venus with no contrails at all.


The ash is invisible from the ground (the problem, as I understand it, is that if you fly a jet engine into what is in effect a fine mist of ground glass at 30,000 feet, the plane may be able to make an emergency landing, but even if it does it will never fly again.) Here's Venus. I think she's sort of crescent-shaped, to a willing mind, and in the same direction as the Moon.

3 comments:

Simba said...

You know the Icelanders don't use the letter 'c'? -So when you ask for cash, all you get is ash ;-)

Leeside said...

It has been wonderful to see Venus bright in the western horizon,just after sunset since late march.There may be a special link up with the crescent moon this evening too! I don't know if the ash has had anything to do with the purple turquoise hint to the sunsets for the past few evenings here in southwest Ireland-will continue to watch & see!!

msHedgehog said...

@Leeside, thanks, I'll look out for it, and thanks for sending me the Flickr page before.