Kdog’s Daily Report, 01/22/19

Good morning, Tuesday people! We have a chill in the air today, at least as defined by Southern Californians: it’s a little below freezing! Loved ones in other parts of the country have mentioned temps of -18 (that is BELOW zero!!!) recently, but for us delicate flowers on the West Coast, even going below 32 degrees is freak. In. COLD! Anyhow… there is ice to be found on the roads this morning. While MOST of the pavement is dry, “wet spots” are actually “icy spots,” so use caution. Lake Gregory Drive has a number of icy areas, but as long as you use caution, and keep your tires on the “wagon wheel ruts,” you should be fine. There is still a little sliding to be done, even in the ruts, though, so just slow it down a little when you are in the visibly icy areas.

Please note two additional things about LGD: One, the DOWNHILL lanes are much icier than the uphill lanes, and two, there is currently a major construction project (I believe a telephone/power pole is being replaced, after winds took it down last night. See the article on www.mountainreporter.com for more details.) about halfway down LGD… no, wait, it’s about halfway UP LGD. Whatever the case, the road is restricted to one lane. The road is open with flagmen alternating traffic flow. Just be careful and be ready for that obstacle.

Okay, we don’t have fog, and we don’t have rain… but the drive is windy! Of course, you knew that our roads have additional curves and turns that were installed under construction many years ago, but today’s “windy” refers to when air moves rapidly along the ground surfaces, stirring up debris, swaying flora, and encouraging rocks to free themselves from where they’ve taken purchase on perches, and head for the open road. Yes… there ARE rocks on the road today, so use caution. My drive did not reveal any big’ns, but the plethora of small’ns that I saw are indicators that big’ns could fall any time.

Okay… today I have something actually, genuinely, amazingly cool for you. First off: ISS has NOT been defeated! Did you know that you have an actual, genuine, naked-eye chance to view the International Space Station as it goes whizzing past us (at 17,000 MPH… it orbits the entire planet every 92 minutes!)? Believe it or not, you can look up and see it, and quite clearly, as long as you know when and where to look… no special equipment is necessary, either. Sometimes it’s even possible to see it during the daytime, although it is MUCH easier to spot at night (when it is one of the very brightest objects in the sky, second only to the moon and one or two super bright stars).

Tonight (Tuesday… wait… Tuesnight?) for example, you can watch it shoot past us at 6:10 PM. Look west-southwest… it will become visible about 35 degrees above the horizon. (The horizon is zero degrees; directly above you is 90 degrees… derive 35 degrees from that info, but do NOT get caught on video with your arm out as if you are saluting Hitler, because you’ll never survive that video virus.) It will appear as a brightly lit THING moving across the sky, where it will eventually (well, three minutes later) vanish at 19 degrees above northeast.

Some evenings you even have the chance to see it twice, when the timing is right, but it does depend on the available sunlight. When it works out, though, you can watch it go past… then, 92 minutes later, you see it again. While you ate dinner and watched an episode of “The Office” on Netflix, that thing ORBITED THE ENTIRE FREAKIN’ PLANET!

It’s easy to see because of sunlight reflection. This is why we have the best chance of seeing it near dusk or dawn: the sun is still shining on the ISS, and we also have a dark background. During the middle of the night, the sun is not going to reflect off of the ISS as it passes over us. It is not “self-illuminated,” so it’s essentially impossible for us to see when sunlight is not reflecting off of it. However, there are times when sunlight angles and other conditions make it possible to spot during broad daylight.

Now, please recognize and accept this great gift of information: where and when to watch the ISS. My eight-year degree in mathematical astrophysics has finally paid off, and after years of research, I am able to extrapolate projected travel paths of the ISS, based upon mountains of data. Well, plus, I looked it all up on http://spotthestation.nasa.gov. If you go there, it’ll ask you for your city… and believe it or not, “Lake Arrowhead, CA” is one of the cities that you can select. Then, just follow the prompts: there’s all kinds of cool info there. Well, it’s cool if you are a space nerd.

Okay, here are a few quickies about the ISS: It weighs about 460 tons… that’s like 11 or 12 fully loaded 18-wheelers, 500 Smart Cars, eight Abrams tanks, 70 fully loaded Rosies O’Donnell, 8,000 Hayden Panettieres, 100 trillion Nancy Pelosi or Kathy Griffin brains, 3,680,000 Quarter Pounders (patties, before cooking), or one 460-ton sack of goose down. It was launched in November, 1998, and has been continuously occupied since. Of course, it started out as just one module, but over the years they’ve added on, and added on, and added on… that’s why it’s so freakin’ big now. However, this adding-on thing will not continue forever. Eventually, the ISS will reach its expiration date, and the plan is to then remove it from orbit—TOWARDS us, not away from us—and dump it into the ocean somewhere. Currently, it orbits about 250 miles above the planet… and did I mention that it moves at over 17,000 MPH? Because of that, the astronauts (and cosmonauts, and Swedishnauts, Mexinauts, Dreadnauts, Slipnauts, Whatnauts, and Forgetmenauts… typically, there are three to six people aboard) experience 15 to 16 sunrises each day. The windows in the sleeping quarters are covered for the simple reason of maintaining the illusion of night in a place where “night” lasts for only minutes at a time. It has now orbited the Earth over 114,000 times… this thing has seen 312 years’ worth of sunrises.

Oh, and speaking of sleeping quarters, here’s one more trivial-but-sort-of-creepy thing: air is constantly circulated in the sleeping quarters for the purpose of avoiding oxygen deprivation problems. Without air circulation, the lack of gravity can allow for sleeping ‘nauts to develop a pocket of exhaled air, i.e. carbon dioxide, around their heads, which can lead to problems. However, with the air being moved around via fans and vents and those Egyptian concubines with palm fronds (I’m not TOTALLY sure they actually have those, but I sort of picture it that way), this issue is, uh, not an issue.

One more space nerd thing: It already happened today, but… this will happen again tomorrow, Wednesday morning; Saturn and Venus  will provide a visual “conjunction,” for those of us on Earth to see (unless you have conjunctivitis or any stigmatisms). This means that the two planets will be lined up practically in a straight line with us… almost like an eclipse of Venus, to us. Now, I don’t want to get you all TOO excited here, but this will look… almost like ONE speck in the sky instead of two! Well, no… that’s an exaggeration. I actually looked at this amazing spectacle this morning. The two are not THAT close. If you hold out a Frank Poncherello/thumbs-up, the two remain about a (non-werewolf phase) thumbnail apart from each other. Whatever… they are like me and my cousin Todd: though we have nothing against each other, we’re just not real close. But, when you see these two, you’ll know it’s them…  Venus is the bright one… Saturn is again like my cousin Todd, not real bright. Very, very exciting… you don’t want to miss that! It already happened today—but you’ll have another chance tomorrow, Wednesday morning, at around 5AM, as you look into the southeastern sky.

Now, make sure that you do not miss this exciting astronomical event: it will not happen again until… November 23, 2019! (Oh, wait, that’s just a few months away… so, if you miss this one, I guess it’s no big. Whatever.) But make SURE you don’t miss the ISS whizzing past… this will not happen again until… oh, tomorrow.