Hurricanes and the Planet Mars

This just off the wire, folks. Okay, not off the wire, but from my blog cousin, Sara, whose blog, Hillbilly Sophisticate, alerts us to a request from Rep. Sheila Lee of Houston that the names chosen for hurricanes include names more common in the Black community. Sara snickers at the whole thing by wondering aloud why names more common to West Virginia aren't used.

And just in case Hurricane Kinesha isn't obscuring your view of the sky, comes word that Mars will be the closest to the earth as it has been in recorded history, and may not be this close again for another 60,000 years. Whoa! This is from my cousin who raises horses somewhere in New Mexico. Want to see some pretty horses? Visit Victoria and check out her Tiger Horses. I'll quote her email to me since she didn't provide a link:

"The encounter will culminate on August 27th when Mars comes to within 34,649,589 miles of Earth and will be (next to the moon) the brightest object in the night sky. It will attain a magnitude of -2.9 and will appear 25.11 arc seconds wide. At a modest 75-power magnification Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye. Mars will be easy to spot. At the beginning of August it will rise in the East at 10 p.m. and reach its azimuth at about 3 a.m. By the end of August when the two planets are closest, Mars will rise at
nightfall and reach its highest point in the sky at 12:30a.m. That's pretty convenient to see something that no human being has seen in recorded history."

Be there or be square.