kareina

Last night, around midnight, while clovis_t and I were out for a walk, we noticed a weird flickering light just above the hill. At first I wondered if it might be attached to the tower at the top of Chimney Pot Hill, but it was too far south for that. Further walking and coming around the corner revealed that it was actually in the sky, to the south east of Hobart, much too high to be attached to a tower, but no where near over-head (perhaps 20 degrees above the horizon?). It changed colours as it flickered, blue, red and white, and seemed to get brighter and paler with the colour change (but if there was a pattern as which colours were brighter, I failed to make a note of it). It didn't look like a normal star or planet, but it also didn't move like a satellite does. Anyone have any ideas? massaria, do you know what would look like that in last night's sky?

During today's walk clovis_t and I saw an interesting visual phenomena. The sun had just ducked behind the mountain, which had a happy golden glow about the edges from the sun's rays shining past it. In the sky above the mountain was a curious dark grey line extending straight up into the air from the communications tower. After marvelling for a moment, the science part of my brain interpreted it as there being sufficient haze/particle matter in the air today for the tower's shadow to be cast *onto the air* above the tower so that we could see it from below. I have never seen anything like it before, but will watch for it on future evening walks...

Alas, the photo isn't as pretty as it was in person (in reality it was still light enough to see colours and all of the trees on the mountain), but the shadow is visible,( if only just )