From “In a dim light: neither daylight”

December darkness is something that I once feared and that may seem like a terrifying thing to people from brighter places. Most Icelanders I’ve talked with find it to be something that one simply deals with, or in some cases, embraces.

On still days and nights when not a single branch twitches nor dead leaf rustles, it’s a time full of witching hours, these hours that stretch from black to sunup- the blueness of the pre-dawn that makes white blankets look aquatic, the white simplicity of light on cloudy winter days, the rich and magical navy of dusk, the purest black of nighttime. Even a clear full-day sky is deep glacial cobalt, and then the snowed mountains across the bay emanate the most perfect kind of frigidity I can imagine. Whenever I want to think of the coldest temperature imaginable, I am sure my mind will go to the black mountains to the north, etched with glowing snow and edged by Arctic sea waters.

Offsetting this chill is the delirium of lights that cover the city- every tree that can hold a bulb is draped, stores staple entire illuminated evergreens over the doors, and windows are festooned with candles. A Saturday stroll becomes a festivity of greetings, street caroling, pepper cookies and cocoa. It’s a tiny glowing oasis in the midst of the miles of darkness beyond, where one single car light over on Kjalarnes can be followed on its entire outbound journey around Esja, a dot of bright in deepest black.

Over here on the banks of Lake Ontario the late Spring finally gave way to a very hot and very dry summer. Too hot and too dry for my liking. But these extra hot days often end with a sudden and explosive thunderstorm. We get some big boomers over here. Iceland sees very few thunderstorms. The last few days here have been unusually hot and humid. But I’ve been watching the clouds grow all afternoon and the wind is now gusting to 70kph. Before dusk or just after we should be getting a big storm off the lake. Tonight should finally be cool and fresh. I hope.

The other night during my drive home a radio show had one of those conspiracy theory leaning alien visit guys on. Normally I would turn it off but I let it go for a while, to have a good laugh perhaps. This fellow and the host were dragging out a notion that a particular area of Canada experiences “about half” of the country’s UFO sightings. They managed to spend ten minutes repeating in different ways the suggestion that hmmm, this must mean something. From over “half” it became “around 50%” and finally “44 almost 45%”. OK, now tell me how big this area is. Oh, this area encompasses 43% of Canada.

So, considering that the prairies are so flat you can watch your dog as it runs away for a week, large parts of the country are uninhabited, and finally that urban areas are too bright to see much sky, I failed to see the significance of this juicy statistic. I wasted 10 minutes on something I would normally not give 10 seconds to and in the end I didn’t even get a good laugh.

It was about 6:30PM local time in Toronto/EDT when I peeked at the weather conditions. Warmer than New York City today. And it was 11:30PM in Reykjavík Iceland. The weather in Reykjavík was partly cloudy with some light rain.

But the sun was still shining at 11:30PM. That is rather interesting even coming from my lattitude that has enough of a sunlight season to cause some folks to get seasonal disorders. These people would not like the Icelandic sunlight swing of 23 hours.. They might like the midnight sun but the long darkness in winter would be too much.

And while we’re looking up at the sky notice the fun that the planets are having right now. Venus is like a flood light shining on Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter as they do the nightly dance. The Moon will come back soon and join the dance. Each night is a treat of symmetry and art deco.

Today is the first day of Harpa, the summer month in the old Icelandic calendar, which is also officially the first day of summer. Nice article at IcelandReview magazine.

And tonight was a nice Venus Moon combo.

» sub glacial volcano.

Of course this can’t compare to the 200+cms that hit upstate New York last week. But with millions of non driving bozos out there trying to cope, it will get interesting. I will be sticking to the tiny back country roads for sure. I love this stuff.

The tail just wagged in my direction so while it is snowing rather heavily the sun is still shining to the side until the tail wags a little further.

The very cold air we’ve been having for a week is creating a huge amount of snow north and south of us after it passes over the lakes. I am living in between two snow belts. I get the cold air and the others are getting the big snow. I’m jealous….

I should have been ready with tripod and thoughtful composure. Instead, I saw it like I do most of my heavenly views, by chance. I caught sight of it while negotiating hordes of urbanites that were in a particularly surly mood. I managed to make it home and to a better view.

Some days are like that, it must be something in the air. Catching the comet was another crazy afternoon that eventually rewarded me with a simple yet elegant natural sight. I think that perhaps my visual reward is proportional to how well I deal with the humanly stresses leading up to the event. I’ve seen the moon/venus combo many times but I always enjoy it. It happens several times per year but you have to look up to see it…

I am very curious to know what the sky view is like in Iceland. The latitude and exaggerated sunrise/sunset swing should make it look and feel different. The sky is a map to direction on earth and a canvas for the mind.

Halastjarnar McNaught / Comet McNaught

Original photo by Hrεiδar.

This picture was taken yesterday in Reykjavík Iceland, by pure luck and good karma I saw the same thing tonight near Toronto Canada. (click the pic for the original flickr pic). I wish I had my camera with me.

I saw it almost by accident since I hadn’t known about the comet. It was a cold and clear night after weeks of warm and wet days. The sunset here was very much like the one I see in this picture. I had my daughters with me and even with the cold air we decided to watch the sunset. The planet Venus was very bright and lovely. We chatted about how the inner planets appear as they do. Then we saw the comet and wondered why that “airplane” looked so much like a comet… but then… hey.. it wasn’t moving. wow, it must be a comet. Actually it was a rather stunning sight to see so near the urban jungle. The conditions and location was as ideal as they get here.

Later on I checked that interweb thing.. and sure enough it was the comet McNaught. And just so happens I’ve been blogging about Iceland lately. So it all fits very nicely…

Here is another picture of McNaught over Sweden. Having the same sky and view of the comet from Toronto is really nice. It fits in with the dream. This event can also be called The Big Flurple.

The position @ 40 degrees.