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John Naylor

@johncnaylor.bsky.social
195 followers 131 following 514 posts

Interested in the physics of sights and sounds in nature. Author of “Out of the Blue, A 24-hour Skywatcher’s Guide”, “Now Hear This, A Book About Sound” & "The Riddle of the Rainbow"

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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 23h
I spy a couple of udus on the studio floor! Exploit Helmholtz resonate, if I'm not mistaken.
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Reposted by John Naylor
Rhett Allain @rhettallain.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
If you look at astronomy textbooks, it's pretty much impossible to show the trajectory of the Earth and moon around the Sun. Does the moon orbit the Sun or Earth? #physics #astronomy rjallain.medium.com/why-do-textb...
rjallain.medium.com
Why Do Textbooks Lie About the Moon’s Orbit Around the Earth?
Everyone knows about the Sun, Earth and moon. As the Earth rotates on its axis, the Sun moves through the sky and this defines a day. The…
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Geocentrism seems not to have yielded to heliocentrism to judge from most representations of the earth-moon system!
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
When the house next to us was refurbished, I complained to the foreman about the radio. He told me that his men could not work without it! I “retaliated” by complaining about every inconvenience, however slight, for the rest of the build.
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
A ruler with markings of 1/64th inch is a matter of triumph of hope over experience!
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I failed to mention an interesting feature of Entwistle's superb rainbow image: the gap between the supernumerary arcs diminishes the closer they are to the ground, implying that drop size is increasing in that direction. Young included a coloured illustrated his 1845 account of these arcs.
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Thomas Young, who was the first person to explain & demonstrate the properties of light in terms of wave motion also was first to explain that supernumerary arcs are a consequence of waves interference.
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Would those be the Liz Truss towers, by any chance?
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Me too. I saw it in ‘58.
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Alarming and dispiriting
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Having now read the article, this claim is a bit of a stretch, to say the least. Stick to directing sun glints on liquid bodies!
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Remarkable, indeed. Here in London, the are starved for rainbows given the lack of rain since earlier this year.
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Too many guns sink ships?
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
There is a widespread claim that there are far fewer words that describe sounds than those that describe sights. But the paucity of our acoustic vocabulary is apparent & more likely to be due to lack of use of what we have
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
A triumph of physics over aesthetics!
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
You couldn’t get a finer view of the fabled ‘seven colours’ of a rainbow than this, always bearing in mind that it’s colours blend into one another, unlike those that can be produced with a prism or diffraction grating
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Fair point
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Thony, it was Huygens who calculated the speed of light sing Romer’s observations. Romer merely surmised that his observations implied that light travels very rapidly: 3000 leagues in less than a second
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
My thought exactly
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Flies are known to be attracted to shit
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Puts my school master efforts to shame!
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Sound is a wave so diffracts wherever it encounters an object or an opening. With few exceptions, almost every sound we hear consist of a collection of wavelengths. Short wavelengths are diffracted much less than longer ones, so low frequency sounds remain audible when source is blocked.
Waves diffract around an object. (A) Longer wavelengths wrap around an object. (B) shorter wavelengths create a shadow beyond an object
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Effects of diffraction first noted by F.M.Grimaldi c.1665. Thoroughly investigated by Newton c 1675 with his usual phenomenal attention to detail and measurement. He accepted that water waves diffract but refused to accept that the phenomenon is due to wave nature of light.
Newton’s illustration of diffraction of waves in water traveling from A to PQ, after passing through a narrow opening,
(Principia Mathematica: Motion propagated through fluids, Prop 41)
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Lunar & solar coronas are not rare but they are seldom as complete and well defined as this one. Note to self : when out & about, look up at the sky not down at my shoes!
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
I would add Thomas Young to that list
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Base of mountain is miraged (inferior mirage)
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Marin Mersenne, Minim friar, died 1 Sept 1648. He was the first person to discover experimentally how the frequency of a vibrating wire is related to its physical characteristics, to measure the speed of sound (by echoes & gunfire), and to determine the least pitch audible to humans is 16Hz.
Marin Mesenne 
8 Sept, 1588 - 1 Sept, 1648
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Hermann v Helmholtz, born 31 Aug, 1821, not only the foremost authority on the optics of the human eye during latter half of 19th C., he was also the leading authority on the perception of sound and its relationship to music. Author of “On The Sensations Of Tone” & “Treatise on physiological optics”
Herman von Helmholtz 1821-1894
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
I have always found inverted images of reflection difficult to read without inverting them. It’s what makes them so puzzling. Evidence, perhaps, of how our visual system expects the world to look to us.
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Potentially, yes, but not necessarily. Consider a situation in which, from the point of view of the observer, the illuminated rain shower occupies less than, say 10° and is confined to, say, 30° from anti solar point. In that situation the observer will see a short primary arc, no secondary.
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Faraday was also one of the greatest theoreticians of the 19th C. Drawing on his research into electricity & magnetism, he the first scientist to suggest that light is an electromagnetic wave, an idea that was given mathematical form by James Clerk Maxwell.
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
No, Berkeley was arguing that the world existed only because it is observed. And if you consider sounds, colours, odors and this like (qualities that we assume are independent of us) he has a point.
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
I am skeptical. Could be due to the plane’s shadow obscuring the lower portion of the bright spot, hence resembling a crescent.
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
So, far from the reassuring biblical bow celebrated by Christians, for much of mankind, the rainbow is a terrifying bridge over which the souls of the dead ascend, hence a portent of death
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
When I first began to take an interest in rainbows I was often struck by how the arc appears to leap into the sky and bury itself into clouds, as it does in this splendid photo. This is the likely origin of the ancient, world-wide belief that a rainbow is a bridge to the next world
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
This is a very clear example of a rainbow feature often ignored by casual observers: the sky enclosed by the arc is filled by light reflected by rain drops. Very obvious here because the rain is illuminated by the rosy light of a setting sun, light that is deficient in blues & greens
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
The bluish fringe just beyond the reddish umbra may be due to sunlight that has passed though the earth’s ozone layer. Ozone strongly absorbs longer wavelength light, which gives the gas its characteristic bluish tinge. Often Noticeable at zenith during twilight.
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Interesting insight in heiligenschein optics bsky.app/profile/john...
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Surprising that there is a specific term for rare "wet" heligenschein but not for more common opposition effect. I've now added "dry heligenschien" to my atmos optics vocab! I once sprayed grass with a mist and could see a H., but photos did not show it.
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Are you sure that’s not Mars?
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
When in France…
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
A good example, although C’s halo is more likely to be due to the opposition effect rather than a heiligenschein. In my experience the latter is quite rare & the former quite common.
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
@fabriziobucella.bsky.social latest post was about trees and sound, which prompted my posts
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Do you mean whether or not "to be is to be perceived"?
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Agreed. The eye is the sine qua non of a rainbow
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Useful advice!
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Berkley maintained that “to be is to be perceived” and you might be tempted to think that the rainbow is proof of this. But while a rainbow is nothing if it is not seen, it is the conditions in which it is seen that are where we should focus the argument about whether it is all in the mind or not.
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
The short answer is an unequivocal no, though the explanation for this has nothing to do with philosophical doubts about whether the world exists independently of its perception, doubts expressed by George Berkely, the 18th C. Irish philosopher
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
As a variation on the hackneyed theme of the sound of falling trees in the absence of a listener, have you ever asked yourself the same question about rainbows? Can there be a rainbow if there is no one to see it?
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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
La chute d'un arbre engendre des variations de pression dans l'air. Ces variations sont perçues comme un son par le système auditif. Le son est une sensation provoquée par l'action de ces variations de pression sur le tympan. Ainsi, en l'absence d'oreille, l'arbre est silencieux.
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