Overheard on CBS Radio this afternoon:

"It was so cold in northeastern Ohio last night that residents saw the Northern Lights, which are normally visible only at much colder polar latitudes."

I hear and read this everywhere. In a recent BBC TV programme about (Joanna Lumley) going to northern Norway in search of the northern lights a so-called local expert said that they wouldn't be expected for a few days as the weather was 'too warm'. There is a reference in the lyrics of Harry Partch's composition "US Highball" to the northern lights being indicative of cold weather. Apart from cold correlating with clear skies there can't be anything in it (can there?) How did this very prevalent myth get going?

I don't quite know if this counts, but did anyone catch Griffin calling Phoenix a rover today during his goodbye speech? :\

I can't see any causative link, Nigel; the 'air' @ auroral altitudes is barely thick enough to even transmit the effects of temperature as we're used to thinking of it. I'd say the myth was borne of the fact that the latitudes at which aurorae are commonly visible (maybe 60 deg north or better) are usually pretty chilly at night anyhow. Plus, cold air is usually also quite still air, which enhances visibility unless there's an inversion.

Wow, AA, did he really say that?? I'll have to listen to the sppech.

From Reuters today, boldface is mine:

"One of the "errors" that Galileo made, which Galluzzi suspects may have been attributed to his bad eyesight, is that he believed Saturn was not perfectly round but may have had an irregular, inflated side.

With his 20-power telescope and with his eyes in bad shape he might have mistaken Saturn's gaseous ring to surmise that it was formed of one planet with two moons as satellites."

I'd possibly have given the author a pass if he was referring to the F-ring alone, but he wasn't, of course.

Why is it not mentioned in the article that Saturn really is flattened at the poles and bulging at the equator? There's no way to know from the article if the fault lies with the reporter, or that Galluzzi guy.

It's enough to make a far side/dark side purist's head explode.

NASA Sees Far Side of the Sun
"After all these years," (mission scientist) Guhathakurta quipped, "we're finally getting to see the dark side of the sun."

A guy can have some fun, can't he? But at the risk of confusing the mainstream press.

Never expected to be able to post a PERSONAL example here, but it happened today..!

I had a call from a BBC reporter yesterday. She didn't start well. "I understand you're a big UFO expert?" she said. Sigh. "No, I'm the exact opposite... I'm an anti-UFO expert... I'm an astronomer. I think you want someone else, sorry." "Oh," she said, momentarily lost, then came back with "So, can you comment on a UFO story for me?" Always happy to help out a reporter, especially when it's a chance to set them straight on something going on "up there", so when she told me about recent reports of "UFO activity" in Cumbria, specifically about "orange lights seen over Sellafield on January 24th" I told her that many people mistake Venus (now clearly visible to the naked eye) and the Space Station for UFOs. (Indeed, ISS made a very bright pass over Cumbria on Jan 24th, so there you go...) I also said that people often mistake Iridium flares for UFOs, and explained that these are bright flares in the sky caused by sunlight briefly reflecting off the solar panels of satellites high above the Earth.

Just look what she wrote.





(link to article - I've asked the reporter to correct it, but no sign of that yet http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cumbria/7884144.stm )

Ahh, those visible mobile phone signals always make ME think I'm seeing things, too.

Sometimes when I get up at night and it's too dark to see my way around, I reach for the amazing cell phone that Stu gave me while he was here. I then hit the speed dial button for the nearest Iridium satellite and presto! the room is lit up by orange flashes as they make their way out of the phone, around the corner, down the hall and up the chimney.

Ah, I see it's been corrected now... glad I grabbed a screen-shot!

And I need that phone back Dan; best torch I ever bought!

Looks like some sort of correction has been made to the article on the web. What I was actually looking for was the ability to comment on the the web article. We could have had some fun, but maybe they only allow commentary on articles written by semi-competent reporters.

Maybe it's just that they only allow commentary from British ISP's? The Guardian allows commentary.

...sorry, Stu, but I'm dyin'! Dan, I gotta borrow that phone; I'm in San Antonio now & my reception sucks for my conventional cel, I need the LaserLink!

On a serious note, I guess...what the hell??? This was written and presumably proofread by someone else before it was published; do other people (not us) actually see cel-phone transmissions? I am completely confounded by this error, probably more so than by the usual misconceptions that plague descriptions of UMSF activities.

No, no, no need... she was really nice when I emailed and pointed out the error, and I like to think she just mis-heard me over the phone, so no harm done, I just thought it was funny, that's all.

( Besides, if I was to be responsible for a BBC reporter being given a hard time it would jeapordise my own radio Outreach work, so we'll leave it at I think. )

By Seth Borenstein, Associated Press
"NASA can land a spacecraft on a peanut-shaped asteroid 150 million miles away, but it doesn't come close to hitting the budget target for building its spacecraft, congressional auditors say." (my bold)

My first reaction was:
Imagine. You work for JAXA, you toil long and hard on the almost miraculous mission that is Hayabusa only to have it turned into an example of NASA can-do-ism which is spread around the world on the AP press wires.

Then I remembered the NEAR landing on Eros.

Still, a lot of people are going to make the connection with the more recent Hayabusa mission