Sunday, January 27, 2013

Moonrise and Devil's Hole

Last night we had a beautiful pearl of a moon rising to the east.  I took a few pictures and planned to blog it, so here we are.  This was taken at 5:50 p.m. on Saturday.  Now on Sunday at 5:58 p.m. I am looking at the same spot, but the moon has not shown up yet.  I wonder how much time difference there is from night to night in moonrise and moonset.

In December I was keeping track via the government weather site of sunrise and sunset times.  That proved interesting: once we passed the solstice, the sunrise time actually moved one minute later and stayed there for several days while the sunset time moved later by about 1 minute every day.  I wonder where I can find information on moonrise and moon set.

Yesterday I was reading the latest issue of The Economist, a very fine magazine published weekly in Great Britain for something like the last 150 years.  There was a small article about the endangered pupfish in Devil's Hole, Nevada.  We had visited there in October and had seen Devil's Hole.  I believe this picture was on the blog, showing the small pool about 45 feet down in a crevice.  What interested me in this article was the mention of the size of this pool: it is just 2 meters wide and 4 meters long.  (A meter is 39," or just over a yard.)  I don't remember that information being available at the park.  Perhaps I just missed it.

The other interesting thing is that this little pool has no bottom, or at least no bottom has yet been found, although it has been explored to the depth of 600 feet.  There are some amazing wonders in this world!

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