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April 2012

We had a clear night the other day! Last month finished with an astronomical photograph. Despite the repetition, we did not want to deny our readers a look at this rather splendid view. It's not often that we have a clear night around here but when the moon joins bright Venus and Jupiter (on the right of the picture), the sky can look rather spectacular. Above the lights of Derry on the left, one can see the constellation Orion. To the right of this is the constellation Taurus - with its main star Aldeberan looking slightly red.  Above the rather over-exposed moon, the Pleiades can be spotted. To the right and slightly above the Moon is Venus, with Jupiter below, just above the hills of Donegal.

Has your clock stopped too? Here at the Newsbrowser we like to give the news that nobody else thinks about. So here is a warning. People who own a clock which is controlled by the atomic clock at Anthorn (formerly Rugby), usually known as the MSF 60kHz atomic clock, may find that their timepiece is not self correcting any more. Should you have changed the batteries the clock will not set itself to the correct time any more. Don't throw the thing out - it is not faulty. The problem is with the MSF transmitter, which has stopped broadcasting the time signal which these clocks use. The notice on the right explains all.  Here is a link to the NPL site . Readers who use a clock manufactured on the continent - locally sold by Lidls - are ok. Those clocks use the timing signal from Frankfurt, which is not affected by the outage.

The new-look Market Street Work on the pedestrian area in Market Street has just about finished and it must be said that - as they say around here - it looks the part. Not only is the surface nice and even, but a neat wavy line in the middle indicates to pedestrians just where it is safe to walk  and hints to shopkeepers to please put their rather ugly bill-boards elsewhere. As our photograph indicates, the new look hasn't really caught on yet as the pedestrians seem to be rather frightened to walk over the grey area in the middle.  No doubt we will all get used to it.

So what do you think of the weather? This paper has been known to make a few derogatory remarks about the weather in the past, but we really have no complaints at the moment. Day follows day with glorious sunny weather, crystal clear air and the smells of spring. Isn't the Roe Valley wonderful these days? Our photograph was taken from Benevenagh looking across to Drumsurn.

The clear sky above. Our illustration on the left shows 10 hours of air traffic in the local sky. It was  recorded on Sunday, the 22nd of this month from ten in the morning till eight at night. Every grey line is the trail of a large aircraft - the little boys are not recorded. One can clearly see the air corridor to the Americas and  - at the bottom - to Dublin. Isn't it amazing just how many fumes are pumped into the clear air above our heads?

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