Carbon Monoxide!?

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Weird. The smoke alarm went off, not incredibly odd when I am using the fireplace, but it wasn't the smoke detector. It was the CO alarm. I was totally surprised. It had never gone off as long as I have had one, over many many years. Yep, after resetting it a few times. It was getting a reading over 200 ppm CO. When I took it downstairs I got a reading near 300 ppm. I started getting light headed at this point. After thinking maybe the furnace heat exchanger failed and puzzling around a bit I figured out what happened. As part of the huge winter storm that recently covered almost half of the US, we lost our electricity. So, being well prepared, I rolled out the generator and started doing what I normally do. The generator (although it was completely outside) was creating CO to get in the house. Using the fireplace draft (and possibly other leaks) the whole house created a vacuum around the seal of the basement garage door. After the CO got into the house the forced air heat...
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In the following picture you will see a very interesting phenomena. The plane is above the clouds with the sun behind. You can see a shadow of the plane, but the more significant thing is the perihelia around the shadow. It was the day for that image. I had several opportunities for pics and I took a little film as well. You can see two distinct rings in the pic. The plane has a relatively sharp edge and the diffraction caused by the plane produces a nice series of rainbows projected on the clouds, I think. Very nice.

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Todd Sheehan said…
We call this a Halo in Hang Gliding. Every once in a while we'll get above the clouds (probably because we were towed there). I've seen my Halo once when I was in Florida... then we flew right through it!
7:57 AM
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