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Cold and clear

Happy New Year, smolnet! The first three days of this week just gone by were the first really clear (and hence really cold) days and nights of this winter for me.

On Monday night I braved the cold to take advantage of the clear skies and took my binoculars out for my first stargazing session in what must have been over a year. This was very much a spontaneous session and I didn't check any of my usual online or dead tree resources for possible targets. I was quite pleased by how well I remembered details of the winter sky from last year. The heavens felt familiar, and I quickly checked in with the Pleiades, the Orion nebula, the Perseus Double Cluster and the Alpha Persei Cluster, all easily found right where I left them. Jupiter was out too, with two moons clearly visible off to the right.

On Tuesday I started cycling to and from work again. This was my first week back after some time off over the holidays, and simply getting in on Monday felt like enough of an undertaking without adding an almost -10°C ride on top, so I took the bus, but it was a one-time luxury. My body self-heats very efficiently when I'm doing even moderate exercise (which, I realise, is just a polite way of saying that it's very inefficient at physical activity) so I'm quite used to riding in fairly normal clothing when my fellow two-wheelers are all dressed up like they're off to the poles in gear which would give me heatstroke if I rode faster than walking pace, but at these temperatures even I have to take a bit of care. I did my best Dougie M impression with a light merino balaclava my wife sewed for me back in Finland when this kind of weather was nothing special, and it worked great, but I didn't go far enough in the glove department. These temperatures are rare enough here that I don't think it's worth investing in any of those lobster gloves, though. Because my ride home is roughly Westward and because the sun sets so early at this time of year, the perfectly clear skies meant that I was treated on Tuesday evening to a stunningly beautiful blue-to-orange gradient in the lower part of the sky on my ride home, which made braving the cold well worth while.

I didn't get to enjoy a repeat performance on Wednesday because instead of heading straight home I went out to a small work event to say farewell to a colleague who's leaving soon. Now the clouds are back an it's grey business-as-usual.