Physics Photo of the Week

  Total Lunar Eclipse of May 15, 2022 - Photo by Donald Collins For approximately 1.5 hours on the night between Sunday, May 15 and Monday, May 16, 2022, the Moon appeared dramatically dimmed by being completely immersed in Earth's shadow.  Viewing this required staying up late - between 11:30 pm and 1:00 am - way past "prime time".  We also see a star visible in the upper left part of the image. Notice the deep red color of the Moon that usually appears white and bright when full and high in the sky.  Why should there be color in the shadow of the Earth when all the light from the Sun is supposedly blocked?  The answer may be explained by "leakage" of sunlight through the Earth's atmosphere, similar to seeing the red sky (when not too cloudy) after the Sun has set below the horizon or before rising at dawn.  The red sunset is caused by the long path through the Earth's atmosphere (almost tangent to the surface of the Earth) as the rays of sunlight pene

  Path of Thunderstorms - Map by CoCoRaHS; discussion by Donald Collins Earlier on this final week of the semester for Warren Wilson College (Tuesday, May 4, 2022) we had a fairly strong thunder storm that created some minor flooding near the campus, but was strongly localized.  No rain appeared in Asheville that afternoon after the storm passed WWC campus.  A map of rain gauge readings contributed by citizen science participants for the same date showed the rain pattern in definite bands ranging from the southeast towards the northeast USA.  The darker and more intense colors indicate a larger amount of rainfall. The image at right shows a spring-time thunderstorm over the Great Craggy Mountains near Warren Wilson College photographed about six years ago (May 12, 2016) and posted last spring on PPOW for April 30, 2021 .   (I was busy on an errand in Asheville during this week's storm and was unable to photograph this week's storm after it had passed.) Click on the 2016 thunder