Light-of-the-Night

Figure 9.8 Close-up of piping arrangement reveal that the hose connection for the middle expansion bottle is in front of the south bottle. Furthermore, the lack of paint on the small piping to south oqiansion bottle sort of camouflages the piping under dim lighting of the night.

It s quite common when driving at night to be dazzled by the lights of the vehicle behind as they reflect from the driver s new-view or door mirror. We can prevent the dazzle by forming a layer of coloured material over the reflecting surface within an electrochromic mirror. Such mirrors are sometimes called smart mirrors or electronic anti-dazzle mirrors . 

Perhaps the critical stimulus perceived by the plant is an increase in the length of the night per se, an hypothesis that could easily be tested. Flowering plants have been collected from near Cerro Quemado in March, and local villagers insisted S. divinorum flowers most abundantly in March, April, and May, when it is the driest. In light of the conditions that promote flowering during the cool and wet winter, these assertions seem more than reasonable. 

Forty years as an astronomer have not quelled my enthusiasm for lying outside after dark, staring up at the stars. It isn t only the beauty of the night sky that thrills me. It s the sense I have that some of those points of light are the home stars of beings not so different from us, daily cares and all, who look across space with wonder, just as we do. 

Figure 4.3 Prelude to Olbers paradox. If we assume a constant number of stars per unit volume of space, the number of stars in each spherical shell increases with distance from your eye. This increase compensates exactly for the fact that more distant stars are further away and individually would appear fainter to us. Each shell of stars contributes the same amount of light to the night sky.

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