{"id":4445,"date":"2020-12-09T18:30:20","date_gmt":"2020-12-10T01:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=4445"},"modified":"2020-12-09T18:30:24","modified_gmt":"2020-12-10T01:30:24","slug":"odd-lots-325","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=4445","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>I&#8217;ve mentioned this before in several places, but I will mention it again here and probably more than once again before it happens: On December 21, <a href=\"https:\/\/earthsky.org\/astronomy-essentials\/great-jupiter-saturn-conjunction-dec-21-2020\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jupiter and Saturn will be only <em>one tenth of a degree apart<\/em><\/a>. That&#8217;s one fifth the diameter of the full Moon. I&#8217;ve never seen two planets that close, and I&#8217;ve been looking at the sky now for 63 years.<\/li>\n<li>As I mentioned in a recent entry, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=4438\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">I&#8217;m putting my big 10&#8243; Newtonian scope back together for the first time in close to 20 years<\/a>. Most of the work lay in building a new base. (Termites ate the original, which I cobbled together out of scrap wood when I was 16.) The base is finished. The rest should be easy. With some luck I&#8217;ll get it all together and do a star test tonight. If my stars are in alignment, it&#8217;ll work. But hey, <em>all<\/em> stars are my stars, so I can&#8217;t lose!<\/li>\n<li>While listening to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=p0KQLJwMDzc\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Peter Hollens<\/a> songs on YouTube, I stumbled across a remarkable women&#8217;s vocal ensemble: Brigham Young University&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Noteworthy_(vocal_group)\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Noteworthy<\/a>. They&#8217;ve posted a number of videos, and all of them are amazing in terms of pure vocal harmony. Nothing I&#8217;ve seen tops <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=v3e1lz0Ghp8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">their cover of &#8220;When You Believe&#8221;<\/a> from the animated film <em>Prince of Egypt<\/em>. It&#8217;s the best song out of a very good bunch, and those ladies nailed it for all time.<\/li>\n<li>I suspect that by now you&#8217;ve probably heard, but <a href=\"https:\/\/popculture.com\/celebrity\/news\/ben-bova-beloved-sci-fi-author-dead-88-due-covid-19\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">SF legend and former <em>Analog<\/em> editor Ben Bova died on November 30<\/a>, of COVID-19 complications. He was 88. Ben taught for a week when I attended Clarion East 1973, and he was spectacular.<\/li>\n<li>And as though that weren&#8217;t bad enough, <a href= \"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/news\/us-news\/chuck-yeager-u-s-air-force-officer-who-broke-speed-n1250322\"> Chuck Yaeger died this past Monday, December 7<\/a>. Yaeger, to me, almost defines the word &#8220;badass.&#8221; He shot down 13 German warcraft during WW2, five of them on one mission. He rode the Bell X-1 to the sound barrier and beyond, and piloted the X-15 to the edge of space. He fought Death to a draw that lasted 97 years. Godspeed, General Yaeger.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wral.com\/look-for-northern-lights-thursday-evening\/19421496\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Watch for Northern Lights from Thursday sunset to Friday dawn<\/a>. (H\/T to Hans Schantz.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve mentioned this before in several places, but I will mention it again here and probably more than once again before it happens: On December 21, Jupiter and Saturn will be only one tenth of a degree apart. That&#8217;s one fifth the diameter of the full Moon. I&#8217;ve never seen two planets that close, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[41,49,68],"class_list":["post-4445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-astronomy","tag-music","tag-telescopes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4445"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4446,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4445\/revisions\/4446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}