The sun is our ‘giver of life’ but it will take it very quickly if given cause, our friend and enemy, the governor of seasons and master weather maker-controller.  Master irrigator, the sun can and does move vast amounts of moisture around our planet with impunity aided by wind currents etc.

In days gone by I have been astounded by the amount of water it could move or indeed remove from one of our major cities water supply dams – tens of millimetres in one day spread over the entire dams surface is one ‘heck’ of a lot of water.

If one was to take note of that sort of evaporation on a smaller water supply such as ‘farm’ dams for instance, the water loss can be catastrophic and in places over seas such as north eastern Africa, to mention only one spot (Ethiopia for instance) life is lost every day to thirst and dehydration.  However, that same evaporation on a really grand scale is, in another location on earth the devastating flood that seems to generate and strike from nowhere.

Imagine if you would how much water is sucked skyward from a position such as ‘Lake Eyre’ in South Australia without mentioning of course the vast oceans that surround our planet.  So couple ‘Sol’ with wind and other weather factors and you have life’s governor’s who are for ever at work somewhere on our planet.  These forces can be managed

Light Pollution Problem

I was reading in ‘The Sun’ news paper (which we receive a couple of times a year – but that’s a delivery problem) that a Cairns company has developed a wrap-around skin for low power ‘light poles’ with imbedded photo voltaic's as an earth friendly way to generate ‘clean’ power and good for them, well done!

Our electricity distribution people have suggested that they will wait a year to see how it goes (very admirable) considering that in our end of Cambridge Street, Gulliver alone there are no less than thirty (30) street lights in around 1km and by their own admission there are millions of the things throughout the country, a fact that any ‘lover’ of the heavens knows only too well.

These lights are all unshielded lights with only a small amount of their radiated light doing the job they were supposedly designed to do, the rest is scattered in every direction including up.  Now we get to my point as a ‘stargazer’ or amateur astronomer hopeful!

Folks, we have lost our beautiful skies.  There is no longer a lovely ‘Milky Way’ above our cities and large towns.  If we have lights to light up our streets