25 thoughts on “December 21, 2020: Conjunction Junction”

  1. The Vikings play on X-mas, which is a Friday. Assuming that game is played as schedule (are there others?), the NFL will have played a game on every day of the week this season. Has to be the first time that's happened.

    Edit: CBSSports.com has an article from December 1 that says this is the first time in the modern NFL era (what does modern NFL era mean? Usually that's post merger, but the NFL hasn't played a game on Wednesday since 1950) that this has happened. I've since found an article that says the NFL has never played on all seven days in the same season.

    1. Could be a records thing. If they don't have access, or quick access, to all of the games then they might add the qualifier just in case.

      1. it's always safer to make a more restrictive claim than a more expansive one. "First time since the merger" doesn't preclude "first time EVAH" or some such.

        FWIW, the AFL's first game was on a friday night, Sept. 9, 1960.

  2. As of December 1, we had received 18.1" of snow so far this season. However, we have had basically a trace in December and there is absolutely no snow on the ground. We have a 40% chance of a snow showers on Wednesday night, with accumulations of up to one inch. More likely than not, we will have a brown Christmas.

      1. I may need to put the blanket thingies on my raised beds tomorrow night to prevent my lettuce from freezing.

    1. Nice! Could you see Titan as well? With the planets closer, you might get it in the shot tonight, too.

      1. I've been studying ahead for tonight, and Titan is definitely on my want list. Last night was really a weak dry-run, just to try some things and to give some neighbors a glance; tonight we're hoping to be a little more "professional" about it -- set up across the street between houses (and away from the street light), and plug in the motor drive. Polaris will be obscured, but if I guestimate well it will keep things within the eyepiece for an extended period of time between adjustments. Weather permitting, I'm hoping to get some video and try out a free program to stack images. It was quite a chore to situate the cellphone in a way that got enough of the image from the eyepiece, but I'm hoping tracking will enable more time to get it right.

        This was around 78x using a 26mm in my C8. I did get a couple fair snapshots of the waxing moon, too, and will give that another shot. Mars near enough to zenith for a what-the-hey as well.

      1. I just cleaned it out. Last time it happened to my wife's car (pre-'vid) they didn't come back and re-make their home.

  3. I mentioned the Learned League trivia game a few weeks ago, and one of the more enjoyable parts of it is when they share the "Best Wrong Answers" after the season ends. Here's a great one:
    Question: Nothing On, a zany English sex farce, is the play-within-a-play of what 1982 comedy by Michael Frayn? The title is stage direction for sounds coming from backstage intended to be heard by the audience (basically this entire play).

    Best Wrong Answer SelectShow
    1. This is one (probably one of the few) that I would know the right answer to, as I had the pleasure of being in that play in community theater many years ago.

      1. Which role?

        I've seen both high school and professional productions of this, and the high schoolers did way better.

        1. It's been so long I had to go to wikipedia to find the characters' names. I was Freddie. My recollection is that for small-town community theater, we were pretty good. Of course, that's not exactly an unbiased assessment.

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