Fear of a Blue Sky

(Blogging note: Two days! TWO WHOLE DAYS! I missed TWO CONSECUTIVE DAYS OF BLOGGING! That hasn't happened in a long time, possibly since I was in Ireland in 2006. But I've been busy, and my routine was disrupted this weekend, so I haven't actually been on the computer since Saturday morning. Here's a post that would have run Sunday, if I had gotten a chance to write it!)

My work is physically tiring, mainly because I'm on my feet and moving for most of a twelve-hour period from 6:00 PM to 6:00 AM. Add in a 45-minute commute each way and it makes for a long day. Or, to be more accurate, night.

I don't have a problem with my drive home most of the time. I take my "lunch" late, usually after 4:00 in the morning, so there aren't any issues with blood sugar dips. (I'm not a diabetic, but these things affect everyone.) I've managed to sprain my circadian rhythms so the ordinary fatigue that kicks in at that time doesn't affect me much. Plus I eat grapes and drink diet cola on the ride home, so I've got that keeping me awake.

I also listen to the radio. Monday through Friday I'm listening to Morning Edition on NPR to get the news of the night and the previous day. Saturdays I surf around a bit but often land on the college radio stations (like VMFM) that play alternative stuff on Saturday mornings.

Sundays are more problematic. From the time I leave work until 6:30 I can listen to Euranet's oddly fatuous weekly summary show on VMFM. (I don't know if they play any of the daily programs on weekdays - I've never come across one.) But after that comes The Lutheran Hour ("Bringing Christ...to the NATIONS!") which, while amusingly and surprisingly strident, only holds my interest for about fifteen seconds or so. So I find myself surfing around a bit, stumbling through the odd mix of programming (particularly public service and interview shows) that fills the airwaves on Sunday mornings when nobody is listening. Consequently my mind starts to wander a bit.

It was while my mind was wandering a bit that I noticed the light in the sky out of my peripheral vision.

Sunday morning was a relatively clear day. Most mornings the past week or so have featured high-altitude fog that does really amazing things to the light pollution that becomes more problematic in the Winter. This is because lights that are properly shielded and directed downward and don't add much to skyglow through the rest of the year are now reflecting off of snow-covered surfaces and salt-whitened parking lots illuminating the sky and moisture-laden air directly above. But Sunday morning wasn't like that, at least not most of the way, or at least not on the part of the trip when I noticed the brightening in the sky.

It was behind me, and over my left shoulder. I was driving along interstate 81 from Olyphant to Nanticoke, which put me on an east-by-southeast* west-by-southwest course. (81 is technically a north-south highway, but it parallels the mountains between Scranton and Wilkes-Barre thanks to the efforts of Congressman Dan Flood, who saw the value in having this major highway connect two of Northeastern Pennsylvania's largest population centers rather than just cutting through mountain passes to continue on its way.) The sky was lit up with an icy blue-white light. Oh, it's the Moon, I thought. Then I remembered that there had just been a solar eclipse visible in the South Pacific this past Friday. Solar eclipses can only happen when the Moon is "New" - well, in the "No Moon" stage of Newness. And after that, the Moon slips into the evening sky to become a slim crescent on the West. Not a big glowy thing that lights up the sky ice-blue in the East in the morning.

Whatever was making the sky light up was out of my direct vision, so I couldn't see the source. What else could be doing this? A plane? No, that would have moved on, at this was holding steady. A light on a tower? Maybe. I've seen flashing beacons illuminate the entire sky under the right conditions of humidity, but this wasn't flashing, and there were no towers that I had ever noticed in this particular area before.

Ohmygodohmygodohmygod, I thought. Could it be a supernova? A star in the sky exploding so tremendously that it outshines everything else, even the Moon? But anything bright enough to make the sky turn icy blue-white would have to be really bright, really big, really powerful - and might be dosing us with enough radiation to fry the atmosphere, destroy the ozone layer, and leave us wide open to the radiation that our atmosphere usually protects us from.

No. No. Phil Plait wrote in Death From the Skies! that there are no stars within range to go supernova in the immediate future, not close enough or bright enough to light up the sky like this.

My mind raced. So what else could be doing this? What else could be causing the Eastern sky to light up like this in the early morning hours?

And then I remembered something I haven't seen in a while, at least not on my ride home. Something that is usually a bit more colorful in its early stages, but that can be washed-out and icy blue-white.

Something called a "sunrise."

Oh. That. Yeah, that would explain it.


*And with that standard left-right confusion typo, this story officially makes NO SENSE WHATSOEVER.

Title reference: "Fear of a Black Hat", a funny movie from 1994 something like a hip-hop version of "This Is Spinal Tap." The title of the movie was itself a reference to Public Enemy's album Fear of a Black Planet.