A new solar lighthenge discovery 🌞🙂
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A new solar lighthenge discovery
Walked into my bedroom at just the right moment this afternoon to find this beautiful patch of illumination on the wall.
It’s sunlight reflected from a dormer window on a house down the valley to the south, sneaking through a narrow gap into my balcony door. The leaf shadows are vines on the neighbour’s wall.
Lasted just a minute & I may never see it again given the angle, time of day & year, & brevity.
Now there’s a metaphor …
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A new solar lighthenge discovery
Walked into my bedroom at just the right moment this afternoon to find this beautiful patch of illumination on the wall.
It’s sunlight reflected from a dormer window on a house down the valley to the south, sneaking through a narrow gap into my balcony door. The leaf shadows are vines on the neighbour’s wall.
Lasted just a minute & I may never see it again given the angle, time of day & year, & brevity.
Now there’s a metaphor …
An interesting point about these reflected sunlight illuminations is that most of the sloping windows involved are quite far away.
In this case, the house in question is 615 metres to the south. Assuming the window is 1 metre wide, that means it subtends an angle of less than 0.1°.
That’s much smaller than the 0.5° than the Sun itself subtends, so the shadows are sharper & you can easily see atmospheric turbulence in the light parts.
I took a video – will post.
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An interesting point about these reflected sunlight illuminations is that most of the sloping windows involved are quite far away.
In this case, the house in question is 615 metres to the south. Assuming the window is 1 metre wide, that means it subtends an angle of less than 0.1°.
That’s much smaller than the 0.5° than the Sun itself subtends, so the shadows are sharper & you can easily see atmospheric turbulence in the light parts.
I took a video – will post.
@markmccaughrean In a second floor flat watching a spot of light on the ceiling reflected off a car sunroof quite a distance away so moving quite quickly resulting in actually believing I was, somehow, clinging to the outside of a planet which was rotating at a noticeable speed. Quite scary, really.
It's a good thing we don't normally question the assumption that the sun rises, rather than the horizon falls.
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@markmccaughrean In a second floor flat watching a spot of light on the ceiling reflected off a car sunroof quite a distance away so moving quite quickly resulting in actually believing I was, somehow, clinging to the outside of a planet which was rotating at a noticeable speed. Quite scary, really.
It's a good thing we don't normally question the assumption that the sun rises, rather than the horizon falls.
@edavies That very much fits the definition of what I call "cosmic vertigo" – the sudden existential realisation that the universe is far less cosily arranged our human scales & senses than we've convinced ourselves.
A favourite for me is driving along in a car, suddenly realising that the sky around you is filled with inaudible & invisible music & voices which your aerial slices through & your radio turns into sound ...
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@edavies That very much fits the definition of what I call "cosmic vertigo" – the sudden existential realisation that the universe is far less cosily arranged our human scales & senses than we've convinced ourselves.
A favourite for me is driving along in a car, suddenly realising that the sky around you is filled with inaudible & invisible music & voices which your aerial slices through & your radio turns into sound ...
@markmccaughrean “Vertigo” — thank you, that was the word I was looking for.
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J jwcph@helvede.net shared this topic
