When Is Noon not Noon?

When Is Noon not Noon? was Originally Posted on May 19, 2012 by lavarock

There are a number of thought-provoking ideas out there. Such as the riddles “When is a door not a door?” When it is ajar. “When is a car not a car?”, when it turns into a driveway.

When is noon not noon? When it is Lahina Noon!

I have mentioned it before but here it is, the first of two times this year. lahina noon is what we call the event in the tropics here when the sun is directly overhead and no shadow is evident. It does not happen everywhere and the further from the equator you get, the less chace you have of it happening. So today and July 23rd, Kailua Kona (the nearest city to my home) will experience Lahina noon. Today was the day and 12:20pm was the time. It was rainy here, so I missed it.

There are a couple of other items involving the skies. Twice a year many satellite feeds go out for a short period. The satellites sit in the Clarke belt (named for Arthur C. Clarke) where they appear relatively stationary to a point on the earth. Thus we don’t have to “track” their location to watch shows. The sun traverses the sky in an arc and at some point will appear directly behind the satellite we are pointed at. The sun contains all sorts of radio energy and that massive transmitter will overload the input of the satellite that we are trying to listen to in front of the sun. As the sun passes, the noise will diminish.

When I watched on my big C-band dish, I could see the noise barely effected the signal one day, then get stronger and longer the next day until there was a period of many minutes to perhaps 20 that the signal was just gone. Then it would fade back in and as each day progresses become less evident.

Because these TV satellites are stationary, finding them is notm very hard, if you know where to look. Thge phrase “First locate the North Star” was listed in my installation instructions.

Now with the smart phones, theres an App for that. On Androids the free one I use to locate satellites is called Satellite AR.

So like the title says, “When is noon not noon?” when it is 12:23pm on the 23rd in Lahina!