Difference between revisions of "2931: Chasing"
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| Meteors || Also called "shooting stars". These are fleeting streaks of light that are visible when bits of rock or dust enter the atmosphere and burn up. These are generally rare, making them exciting to see, but there are {{w|meteor showers}} when many are visible due to the Earth passing through a large cloud of dust (usually the remnants of a comet). To astronomy buffs, these can be like natural fireworks shows. Because each meteor streak lasts for a fraction of a second, it's not generally possible to chase them, although if the rock is large enough it may survive to the ground and become a {{w|meteorite}}, which chasers may be able to find by tracking its path through the sky. | | Meteors || Also called "shooting stars". These are fleeting streaks of light that are visible when bits of rock or dust enter the atmosphere and burn up. These are generally rare, making them exciting to see, but there are {{w|meteor showers}} when many are visible due to the Earth passing through a large cloud of dust (usually the remnants of a comet). To astronomy buffs, these can be like natural fireworks shows. Because each meteor streak lasts for a fraction of a second, it's not generally possible to chase them, although if the rock is large enough it may survive to the ground and become a {{w|meteorite}}, which chasers may be able to find by tracking its path through the sky. | ||
|- | |- | ||
| − | | {{w|Rainbows}} || A visual effect that occurs when sunlight is refracted by water droplets in the air, spreading the light into a spectrum of different colors. | + | | {{w|Rainbows}} || A visual effect that occurs when sunlight is refracted by water droplets in the air, spreading the light into a spectrum of different colors. Their 'location' is relative to each observer, so long as the necessary components combine correctly in the first place, so any coordinated movement is restricted to finding the right sort of standpoint from which a rainbow is visible. |
|- | |- | ||
| {{w|Comets}} || Comets are chunks of rock and ice that orbit the sun, usually in highly eccentric orbits that take them from the inner Solar System to the {{w|Kuiper Belt}} or {{w|Oort Cloud}} at the extreme outskirts of the Solar System. Few of them are visible to the naked eye. They're exciting to see because they're rare, and one of the few astronomical objects that looks like more than just a tiny dot because there's a glowing "tail". While they're moving very rapidly through the Solar System, from the Earth they don't appear to move much faster than planets. So there's no need to chase them; when near the Earth, it will be visible from much of the planet for days or weeks. | | {{w|Comets}} || Comets are chunks of rock and ice that orbit the sun, usually in highly eccentric orbits that take them from the inner Solar System to the {{w|Kuiper Belt}} or {{w|Oort Cloud}} at the extreme outskirts of the Solar System. Few of them are visible to the naked eye. They're exciting to see because they're rare, and one of the few astronomical objects that looks like more than just a tiny dot because there's a glowing "tail". While they're moving very rapidly through the Solar System, from the Earth they don't appear to move much faster than planets. So there's no need to chase them; when near the Earth, it will be visible from much of the planet for days or weeks. | ||
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| {{w|Sunsets}} || Disappearance of the Sun below the horizon, should happen usually once every 24 hours (except close to the poles). Depending on weather conditions, they can sometimes be very pretty. | | {{w|Sunsets}} || Disappearance of the Sun below the horizon, should happen usually once every 24 hours (except close to the poles). Depending on weather conditions, they can sometimes be very pretty. | ||
|- | |- | ||
| − | | {{w|The Moon}} || Earth's only natural satellite with a predictable orbit. Only 12 people (the {{w|Apollo astronauts}}) have actually visited it in person; the rest of us see it from about 250,000 miles away. Weather permitting, it's visible for | + | | {{w|The Moon}} || Earth's only natural satellite with a predictable orbit. Only 12 people (the {{w|Apollo astronauts}}) have actually visited it in person; the rest of us see it from about 250,000 miles away. Weather permitting, it's visible for about half of every day/night cycle (though may be more obvious when this occurs significantly in the night sky, for several reasons). It doesn't move quickly in the sky, by apparent movement, so little chasing is necessary. |
|- | |- | ||
| Unusual clouds || | | Unusual clouds || | ||
Revision as of 23:21, 10 May 2024
| Chasing |
 Title text: Certain hybrid events can only happen in certain locations where all the conditions are present; chasers flock to the area in and around Kansas known as tumbleweed-colliding-with-possum alley. |
Explanation
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This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by an exciting BOT on the run - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks. |
This comic is a scatter plot comparing how exciting it is to see various things with how possible it is to chase those things using a convoy of coordinated vehicles.
The least chasable are stationary places like the Grand Canyon or International Date Line. It makes no sense to chase them because they don't move around, you just go to their known locations. At the other end of the chasability spectrum are animals that move around rapidly, and fleeting astronomical and atmospherical phenomena like clouds, meteors, and aurora. However, some of these are difficult to chase because they're small and hard to detect from a moving vehicle, e.g. gnats.
| Entity | Explanation |
|---|---|
| The Grand Canyon | Stationary place in Arizona. It's the largest canyon in the US (but not the world). It's very beautiful due to its depth and the color changes from different geological strata. So it's exciting to see and one of the most popular tourist attractions in the country. |
| Niagara Falls | Stationary place on the border of US and Canada, between the state of New York and the province of Ontario. The waterfall is the largest in North America by width and water volume, making it very beautiful to watch. |
| Tourist attractions | Other stationary places that attract many tourists (e.g. national parks, monuments, and historic places) |
| Tourist traps | Stationary places that market themselves as tourist attractions, but don't really have much to offer and exist mainly to sell food and souvenirs. |
| Sand traps | Pits of sand in golf courses. If your golf ball lands in one, it's more difficult to hit it out to the grassy portions (fairways or greens), which is why it's a "trap". |
| The International Date Line | Jagged conceptual line running from the North to South poles around 180 degrees of longitude, used to separate the time zones that start and end each day. There's nothing to actually see at these locations, and it is intentionally mostly in oceans. |
| Meteors | Also called "shooting stars". These are fleeting streaks of light that are visible when bits of rock or dust enter the atmosphere and burn up. These are generally rare, making them exciting to see, but there are meteor showers when many are visible due to the Earth passing through a large cloud of dust (usually the remnants of a comet). To astronomy buffs, these can be like natural fireworks shows. Because each meteor streak lasts for a fraction of a second, it's not generally possible to chase them, although if the rock is large enough it may survive to the ground and become a meteorite, which chasers may be able to find by tracking its path through the sky. |
| Rainbows | A visual effect that occurs when sunlight is refracted by water droplets in the air, spreading the light into a spectrum of different colors. Their 'location' is relative to each observer, so long as the necessary components combine correctly in the first place, so any coordinated movement is restricted to finding the right sort of standpoint from which a rainbow is visible. |
| Comets | Comets are chunks of rock and ice that orbit the sun, usually in highly eccentric orbits that take them from the inner Solar System to the Kuiper Belt or Oort Cloud at the extreme outskirts of the Solar System. Few of them are visible to the naked eye. They're exciting to see because they're rare, and one of the few astronomical objects that looks like more than just a tiny dot because there's a glowing "tail". While they're moving very rapidly through the Solar System, from the Earth they don't appear to move much faster than planets. So there's no need to chase them; when near the Earth, it will be visible from much of the planet for days or weeks. |
| Sunsets | Disappearance of the Sun below the horizon, should happen usually once every 24 hours (except close to the poles). Depending on weather conditions, they can sometimes be very pretty. |
| The Moon | Earth's only natural satellite with a predictable orbit. Only 12 people (the Apollo astronauts) have actually visited it in person; the rest of us see it from about 250,000 miles away. Weather permitting, it's visible for about half of every day/night cycle (though may be more obvious when this occurs significantly in the night sky, for several reasons). It doesn't move quickly in the sky, by apparent movement, so little chasing is necessary. |
| Unusual clouds | |
| Regular clouds | |
| Fog | Atmospheric condition where water droplets are very dense near the Earth's surface, resulting in a visible haze. Very few people will chase fog.[citation needed] |
| Rain | Water droplets falling from clouds. In most of the world, this is a pretty common occurrence. Unless the volume is extremely high, there's rarely much excitement due to them, but extreme cases may cause flooding that can be dangerous. The only people who typically chase them are weather reporters. |
| Aurora | Impressive light displays that result from excitement of the Earth's magnetosphere by charged particles in the solar wind. These are generally only visible in high latitudes, so most people do not live where they're visible. Their visibility can be tracked and forecasted via monitoring of solar wind output from the sun, and particularly intense episodes can be predicted (as well as locations for viewing) on the basis of the solar cycle and solar flare activity. The release of this comic happens to coincide with the strongest geomagnetic storm warning forecasted by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in 20 years [1]. |
| Your favorite band's shows | Musical acts often plan "tours", where they go around the country (or world) putting on shows every few days. Extreme fans with time on their hands may "chase" them by going to a series of their shows. Since the tour dates are planned and publicized well in advance, this is relatively easy. |
| Rare birds | Many birders will "twitch" to see rare birds, and this requires a fair amount of checking location, behavior, etc. Also, rare birds tend to be exciting to see. |
| Regular birds | These are easier to see than rare birds.[citation needed] |
| Hot air balloons | |
| Radiosondes | Small instruments carried in weather balloons to gather and transmit atmospheric parameters. There's not much to see in them, but they're easy to track with a proper receiver. |
| Neighborhood possums | "possum" is a common term for Virginia opossums, the only species of opossum found in North America. In urban areas they will get into human garbage, and may carry diseases, so many may consider them pests and hunt them. A coordinate group of hunters can track them. |
| Regular balloons | Both children and adults accidentally let go of balloons, and will attempt to chase after it to retrieve it. |
| Ice cream trucks | Small vans that sell ice cream. They're easy to chase because they often play music and/or ring a loud bell so customers will know they're coming. Young "chasers" also often scream loudly when they hear once coming, so others (particularly a parent or caregiver who is needed to provide the money) nearby will be aware. |
| Gnats | Nobody wants to track down gnats, but people could theoretically use advanced instruments to do so. |
| Tumbleweeds | A roughly spherical portion of certain plants that breaks off from its roots and rolls along the ground, propelled by winds. Most people don't find them very interesting to look at. They don't usually travel very quickly, so it would be possible to chase them if you were so inclined (they may be of interest to plant biologists and ecologists). |
| Speed traps | A section of a road where police often wait for passing drivers who are exceeding the speed limit, so they can catch them and issue speeding tickets. Frequent drivers, especially truck drivers, have developed systems to warn each other of these locations (citizens band radios were once the most popular method, now this can be done using mobile phone using services like Waze). |
| Other chasers |
Transcript
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This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks. |
- [An X Y axis graph]
- [Y axis label:]
- Exciting to see in person
- [X axis label:]
- Possible to chase in a convoy of vehicles coordinating over radio and using instruments and data to find optimal viewing locations?
- [X and Y axis values (from bottom left):]
- No
- Yes
- [Top left quarter:]
- The Grand Canyon
- Meteors
- Rainbow
- Comets
- Niagara Falls
- Sunsets
- The Moon
- Tourist attractions
- Unusual clouds
- [Top right quarter:]
- Aurora
- Tornadoes
- Whales
- Your favorite band's shows
- Icebergs
- Rare birds
- Hot air balloons
- [Bottom left quarter:]
- Tourist traps
- Regular clouds
- Sand traps
- Fog
- Rain
- The International Date Line
- Gnats
- [Bottom right quarter:]
- Regular birds
- Radiosondes
- Neighborhood possums
- Regular balloons
- Ice cream trucks
- Tumbleweeds
- Speed traps
- Other chasers
add a comment! ⋅ add a topic (use sparingly)! ⋅ 
refresh comments!Discussion
Weather permitting, the aurora borealis may be visible from northern US tonight. I wonder if that inspired this comic. There's also a new "Twister" sequel coming out this summer, which is about tornado chasers. Barmar (talk) 21:14, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
Sadly, given last month's event, "Total Solar Eclipse" is not on the chart. With the changing clouds over Texas on eclipse day, many were driving around figuring out where best to watch from. I would put it at the top of the chart and almost fully to the right. 172.68.34.61 21:41, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
- I'm astonished that solar eclipses aren't in this comic or the title text. Zowayix (talk) 22:42, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
- Yeah, I would replace Tornados with that TSE. Tornados might be exciting in person, and people might be chasing them, but they are more terrifying than exciting. 172.70.246.187 08:11, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
I feel like Randall is selling Ice Cream Trucks short. Doctorhook (talk) 02:56, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
- I strongly disagree with this chart, about the possibility of chasing the Grand Canyon & the international dateline. Owing to length & downhill grade of the former, & timing sensitive nature of the latter.
- ProphetZarquon (talk) 03:02, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
- What 'timing sensitive nature' of the latter? Apart from historic changes, and lacking any further proposed ones, you're just talking about a discontinuity effect that happens continuously.
- Unless you mean timing it for an hour (or maybe two, or more, depending upon less straightforward TZ-abuttal??) every day, you can perhaps step/paddle back and forth between "very late night" on one date and "very early in the morning" on the next-but-one date. 172.69.195.62 09:39, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
Uhhh, isn't it an activity to take donkeys down into the Grand Canyon? That feels not all that different than the convoy thing - pretty sure it IS similarly done in groups, and that it's indeed to see the place better... :) And that radios would be advisable. And I've never even been anywhere near there! NiceGuy1 (talk) 06:11, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
- I would moreso call that exploring than chasing. 172.69.214.72 13:55, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
Seems to have completely missed the eclipse chasers all over the US recently :D 172.70.246.187 08:08, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
- You could say "they've been eclipsed"... (Which is what they all want!) 172.69.195.62 09:39, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
I believe I read about a plan to chase the interstellar object 'Oumuamua, which would be like chasing a comet but even more so. --162.158.38.70 20:17, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
Speaking as someone who lives where there are none of the former and many of the latter, seeing a possum would be much more exciting than seeing a hot air balloon.172.70.90.29 09:21, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
- Ok, not hot-air, but: https://projectpossum.org/research/balloon-nlc-imagery/ 172.70.163.120 10:51, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
For the whale explanation, don't scientists chase whales as well?--Calpurnia Tate (talk) 00:34, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
- Which reminds me... should Sea Shepherd be mentioned in "Chasing other chasers" as some sort of actual example? Because that's quite literally what they do... Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 06:47, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
Number of Apollo astronauts
Are we counting unique individuals or total visits? There were six landings with two astronauts each, but someone went twice? 162.158.186.249 (talk) 20:48, 11 May 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
- Nobody doubled up. 6x2=12. (Some went on up to three separate 'walks'/drives away from their craft, but no-one landed twice.) 162.158.74.49 21:59, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
- Arguably the crews of Apollos 8, 10, and 13 also visited the Moon; As did the Command Module Pilots on the six missions with landings. These guys all got 99.9+% of the way there, and while they didn't touch it, nor did the twelve guys who landed (none of whom were brave enough to take their gloves off while outside the LEM).
- In this extended group of lunar visitors, there were some double ups, e.g. Jim Lovell, who was on Apollos 8 and 13. 172.68.210.3 22:55, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
- You could also say that many of them got 100.1-% of the way there, when they orbited around the far side. 172.70.211.99 00:35, 12 May 2024 (UTC)
- In total, 24 people went to the moon on 9 trips (Apollo missions 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17), with 12 men actually landing, walking and driving around, and leaving (Apollo missions 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17). There were 3 people who flew there twice, but nobody landed more than once, yet. Nutster (talk) 18:44, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
I so much want to include Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. 172.69.71.130 14:46, 12 May 2024 (UTC)
