一图胜千言
虹说
May 29th
初稿 廿一年五月廿九日
夫穗城闹市也,甚少见虹,叶子居十余载仅见其二,可谓稀矣。然五月初三,竟晨、昏各得其一,尤为幸也!然众人却不若。
日出时分,起见二断虹高居于西,却不见雨水,惟白云丝缕,蓝天清净。骑赴泳,二虹亦伴左右,时隐时现,逾半时辰而匿。叶子久未见虹,日间惊叹而念其妙;未料日入时分,东方四十里得一高塔,少顷而大之,其底乌然。绝眦而望,得半虹于下,却不如晨时媚,两刻而消,高云亦散,作大云之观。
叶子见友而说之,友皆愕然,言不曾见之。夫晨虹也,虽明且媚,人皆寝,故不得见;昏虹也,又为也黯然,众人皆看行路,不能得其趣。呜呼!夫自然之美,虽无所不察,然众生尽庸碌也,或寝或疾,仰观其大者微。
已丑年五月初六涂。
近日皆忙庸碌之事,虽有二博文(《地图》和《白哈巴》)在写,但思绪枯竭,下笔无神,只能一再返工修改。廿六日偶得二虹,如获至宝,待庸碌事毕,必以百倍之精神,叙畅游中华之妙事,咔咔。
第9次北京之行札记兼影集
Mar 14th
第9次来北京,主要目的当然是听世界第一乐团维也纳爱乐的访华演出,除此以外还在北京大学和北京天文馆各作了一次讲座,除此以外还穿插了半夜赴八达岭观星以及逛北京城的新奇体验,这里就结合照片简单流水账一下吧。
住在故宫边上的北平国际青年旅舍,一个典型的四合院建筑,周围也都是很有京味的胡同,好地方。就是走到地铁站远了点,从天安门东走到旅舍要大约15分钟。
傍晚本来打算去北大吃完饭正好讲座。可惜我再次低估了北京城的大小(另外,点名批评世界第一恶心地铁换乘:北京地铁2号线和13号线西直门站换乘),饭没吃成,讲座倒迟到了将近20分钟,很抱歉地劳烦听众们等候了。讲座反响热烈,不过也有大牛觉得讲得太浅了,真是众口难调啊。不过毕竟是科普讲座,自然不能讲得太深。
夜里有月掩鹿林彗星,凌晨一点钟朱进开车带我上八达岭外的某个小村去观测。凌晨一点上长城,也够有趣的,反正以朱进的飙车技术,半个多小时就到了。当地气温约为零下5摄氏度,茸帽和围巾悉数上阵才勉强抵挡得住,然后我帮朱进架好设备。不过山区夜间有雾,因此并没有看到彗星,倒是拿着3G上网卡四处上网,很好玩。凌晨5点钟回到旅舍,赶紧睡觉。
第二天,3月8日,11点半搭朱进的车上天文馆,在天文馆餐馆的包间吃了顿丰盛的午饭,席间见到了鼎鼎大名的郑宜婷师妹。郑送给我一个全金属的机模作为见面礼,做工极为精致,实乃妙人一位。可惜她晚上还有事,而我饭后要准备讲座,所以没怎么聊。我仅用不到一个小时时间准备了下午的讲座,也创了记录。讲座反响也不错,不过因为我对听众素质没底,所以好像讲得忒浅了一些。朱进随后把我带到办公楼会见天文馆的大牛们,并建议我以后来北京就来作讲座。讲座结束以后又见到了从天津风尘仆仆赶来的赵文琦同学,她也低估了北京的大小,结果没及时赶上讲座,于是我们到前门吃了顿过桥米线,我顺带给她开了专场讲座,之后把她送到南站。北京南站实在是个坑人的地方,从北京南站公交站到真正的北京南站居然还要坐3站路,而且居然还要收费!如此新鲜的火车站我也是第一次见到。估计老外来了会摸不着头脑吧。
本来想直接回旅舍睡觉的,却突然由于一些奇怪的原因,跑回天文馆去找小雨(小雨:前年到南开参加挑战杯全国赛时接待广东队的志愿者,这次也跑来北京听我的讲座)。小雨同学在旅行方面的嗜好和我相近,两人敲定了一个疯狂的主意:半夜逛北京!于是我们差不多0点从天文馆出发,徒步回旅舍,全程大约14公里,大概在凌晨3点到达。夜晚的北京十分静谧,只有北风咆哮。我们在护城河外停下来眺望夜间空无一人的紫禁城,揣测着两三百年前皇帝夜里睡不着起来巡视宫殿时的情景。天安门广场灯火通明,但只有巡逻的武警战士。他们看起来很寂寞,见我们不像“可疑人士”,便主动给我们指示方向(也不论我们是否需要)。我以前8次来北京的时候每次都会来天安门广场,但这是我第一次在凌晨看到如此冷清的广场,感觉很是奇特,似乎平时喧嚷的人群瞬间从世界上蒸发,只剩下星星在天空中发射着清凉的光。
第二天一早又起来瞎逛,这次把北大也逛完了。清华的西门烤翅让人大失所望。很遗憾由于时间关系没见到丁丁、叶子和卜卜。到了晚上自然是到国家大剧院欣赏音乐了,补发几张国家大剧院的相片。
10日,离开的时间又到了,我还是再次逛了一下天安门广场。这么一逛可坏事了,我错过了预定时间从东直门出发的机场快轨,结果到机场的时候离起飞只剩下25分钟了。好在我的跳跃功力还是不错,在首都机场飞跃N个行李之后还是顺利赶上了飞机。去机场的路上还是很镇定地欣赏了3号航站楼,的确很气派!起飞以后,飞越燕山的时候看到了山上的皑皑白雪,非常美丽。可惜的是我这个冬天在北方转了这么久,却没见到雪花。
最后夸奖一下北京的进步。我原以为奥运时的改善措施基本都是昙花一现,没想到这次去看到了一个完全不一样的北京。最引人注目的就是蓝天,比广州的好多了,我在中关村附近都可以很清楚地看到远处的山脉,其洁净程度甚至超过了我印象中的墨尔本,真是不可思议。地铁站、公交车站以及其他的公众场合,北京市民的表现也可以算是内地首屈一指的,让人很是愉悦。
A Lulin-style hair before hair cut
Mar 5th
Revised on 2009 March 12.
With the help from Sisi Chen, I finally managed to make a "Lulin-style" hair before I cut it off -- see above. I wish to thank Sisi for her patient and help. Sisi is also a fan of astronomy, and she had been well possible to study astronomy in Nanking University -- but for some coincidence she came to Sun Yat-sen University and study meteorology as me.
Today I went to the barber's and cut my hair very short. Let's see how Lulin will response this time! Before updates on Lulin's appearance, let's see some nice photos from Lulin and others.
This very nice photo is taken by Michael Pagitz with a GRAS (Global Rent-a-scope) telescope, used with permission. Michael is a long term user of 7Timer! service (http://7timer.y234.cn) and I'm really happy to see his nice Lulin image!
And finally I took some Lulin images with the 0.41-m reflector (the one which found the comet) during the course of Lulin Sky Survey, and confirmed that I have to the right to publish them on my blog this time (but please don't re-post these images on your sites). The animation above show a major burst during late Feb. 25, the duration of this animation is about 1-hour (around 15-16h UT).
The one above is taken on Feb. 28 with LRGB combined, the total exposure time is about 170 minutes. There are other images below you may have a look. According to the latest reports, the comet is still visible to naked-eye observers at magnitude of about 5.5.
Feeling lucky when Lulin shining above
Feb 25th
I departed with a few friends from Guangzhou for Gaocun Village at around 22:30, Heng Zhou drove the car. It's our Guangdong Southern Cross Star Association which held the party, and there is only one topic -- Comet Lulin. It was prefectably clear all the way down, but according to the messages from those friends who arrived earlier, "it's overcast!" We laughed and refused to believe, as the sky was really "rarely-seen prefect".
At around 0:15 we arrived Gaocun and had to believe what was told earlier -- it's indeed overcast. What made us feel more frustrated is that we were under a small patch of heavy cloud, the patch went just right over the village. After a few minutes of discussion, we made a casual decision that a new temperory site must be found. Quanzhi Shen and several others would stay at Gaocun since their equipment could not move easily, while Heng, I, Jianji Li and some others (2 cars in total) would drive east to seek for clear sky. We made a U turn and drove about 10 kilometers to reach the clear sky we had found on the way to Gaocun, but quite unfortunately, when we found a flat area near Xiaodong Village after about half an hour's search and were just about to unpack our equipments, the clouds came and blocked our view. Disappointed and frustrated, we decided to go back Gaocun, set up our tents and sleep. At around 1 a.m. we arrived Gaocun and began to set up our tent. "Lulin is shy," I explained to others, as I had predicted the sky to be "partly clear" that night but it seems not, "she is unwilling to turn up when there are so many guys pointing their telescopes to her."
We worked 20 minutes to set the big tent up, but just at the time we finished all the things and plan to go to sleep, Heng's mobile phone rang, it came from another group which had also went out to seek clear sky, "You said that the sky is clear there?" Heng shouted, and we were all stop talking to hear what he went on, "drove... west? Okay, okay, we're coming." After only five minutes, Heng was driving at about 150kph at the tiny path heading west and we were on his car (Quanzhi Shen and his fellows stayed still at Gaocun). At about 1:40 we arrived Picun Village, the group arrived earlier had set up a temperory observing field on the ground in the front of the local goverment building. Everyone was unpacking their equipments with a hurry. I, too, dragged my 11x70 binocular out from my bag as quickly as I could. Less than 15 seconds did I spotted comet -- it's almost impossible to miss that bright, fuzzy, lovely target, with a mild anti-tail pointing east, that's really gorgeous! I measured its brightness to be 4.6, with a ~25' coma and a tail at a length of ~1.7 deg. Heng estimated the brightness to be around 4.2 with his 10-cm refractor. We could spotted it easily with naked-eye, the estimate is about the same with the binocular's -- around 4.5 mag. with a 30' coma, but I couldn't detect the tail with naked-eye.
Xun Zheng, a journalist of the Evening News who had monitored activities of our association for a long time, took some nice photos of us, and two of them were printed on the Yangcheng Evening News later that day. After obtaining Xun's permission, I'm posting some of them here.
I also took a glance of a few dozens Messier objects with my binocular before the sky turned bad at around 5 a.m. We learnt later that the sky of Gaocun also became clear but still far from Picun's. As an old Chinese saying goes, "Man proposes, but God disposes." For any astronomical activities, no matter how well you prepared, the God only need a patch of cloud to let your preparation get ruined. We were very lucky to get 3 hours clear sky that night.
As spaceweather.com had reported, Lulin's tail is changing rapidly. Around Feb. 22 the ion tail suddenly showed some complex structure, but on Feb. 25 the ion tail was torn away by a solar win gust (I'm not fully agree with this solution; it might as well be the geometry effect which had made the ion tail disappeared). On the other hand, the appearance of the comet appeared to be about normal (as the structure of ion tail is not visible to visual observers under most occasion), except the main tail is an anti-one: it points directly to the sun! But after Feb. 26, the double-tail Lulin will become mostly single-tail since the comet has passed the opposition point and the geometry effect (see my earlier explanation) disappears. Stay tuned for updates!
东部小回环流水账 [5]
Feb 15th
15日一大早就要启程上黄山了,估计到武汉之前都只能通过2G的网络上网,所以就在这里把南京之行也结个尾,顺便给各位几张新鲜照片吧。
14日我就没让自己再睡懒觉,7点多钟就爬起来了。天气基本晴朗,但清晨市区气温只有4摄氏度左右,比起前天的最高27度真是差了好多。走了半天找到南阴阳营搭车去明孝陵,孝陵的确不错,我个人更加喜欢西安乾陵的那种设计。值得一提的是孝陵前有座梅花山,现在梅花恰好全部开放了,加上14日是西方情人节,因此看起来很有味道。之后步行瞻仰了中山陵,又坐车去看夫子庙。看来夫子庙现在主要的用途还是步行街,文物景观倒是其次;顺着唐诗中反复提及的秦淮河(现在已经是一条接近大阴沟的河了)走到中华门,买票上城门走了一阵,觉得没什么味道,不过在作为护城河的秦淮河(在城池附近秦淮河被分为好几条,以便引为护城河)对岸看起来还是不错的。南京城墙比西安城墙要高接近1倍,而且总里程也长很多(世界上最长的城市城墙),看起来更有气势,但它不是连续的,有少数地段已经被拆毁,而且大多数地段都无法通行。步行到瞻园,正在装修无法进入,只好又坐车到太平门,走目前仍开放的最长一段明城墙,有感觉多了。这一段城墙虽然经过修缮,但历史韵味较西安的更足一些,路面都长满了荒草。步行到终点鸡鸣寺,结束今天的游览。由于时间安排的缘故,雨花台没有去,但我估计应该不会算太遗憾。今天徒步距离高达28.2公里,创下本次出行的最高纪录。
看来两个星期前的预测相当准确,目前来看黄山下雪的概率已经接近100%,但雪量则从原先的大到暴雪调整为雨夹雪或小雪,能否看到漂亮的雪景还要依靠老天的恩赐。在最后一个便捷的网络接入点,我对黄山景区(不是黄山市)做出以下预测:15/16日夜间最低气温约2至4摄氏度,有小到中雨;16日白天最低气温约-1至2摄氏度,有小雨转冻雨或雨夹雪间小雪;16/17日夜间最低气温-4至-2摄氏度,有小雪到中雪;17日白天-1至1摄氏度,有冻雨或雨夹雪;17/18日夜间-5至-3摄氏度,有小雪到中雪;18日白天0-3摄氏度,有雨夹雪或小雨。如果不出意外的话,我会在16日一早由汤口上山,18日下午下山。接下来的计划如下:19日晨抵南昌,中午由南昌出发,晚些时候抵武昌;20日在武汉停留;21日晨由武昌出发抵岳阳,即日中午或晚上由岳阳启程返广州。祝各位周末愉快。
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