Astronomy Israel: Middle East

Showing posts with label Middle East. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow!

Last week's snow storm covered the Middle East with record snows. Jerusalem had over a foot of snow, the most in 50 years. It even snowed in Cairo for the first time in over 100 years. Here's a magnificent photo from NASA's space weather station of the Middle East after the storms cleared. The white areas on the ground are all accumulated snow, not clouds. Click on this link for a MUCH bigger image.

http://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/82000/82611/MiddleEast_tmo_2013349_lrg.jpg

Monday, November 4, 2013

Photos from the Solar Eclipse of November 3, 2013

We went up to the roof of the physics building at Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva where a public viewing session was being held. Here a group of students uses eclipse glasses and a small Meade telescope to view the eclipse.

On top of the physics building at BGU is a large dome with a 16 inch Meade schmidt cassegrain telescope. Here a student uses a small solar telescope attached to the Meade tube.

An impressionistic view of the eclipse through my No. 12 welder's glass.

The sun at mid-eclipse, about 4:15PM, partially obscured by an antenna on a nearby building.

The sun, 20% eclipsed. This is what it looked like through my No. 12 welder's glass filter.

The sun sets behing the BGU computer science building.

A rather impressionist view with the filter tiled from the perpendicular.

Allright, not an eclipse picture. But as I was leaving campus I came across this group of mechanical engineering students fine tuning their race car. Amazing what you can find at Israeli universities!