More sky goodness

To continue on my recent post about exciting things in the sky, last night was a very entertaining celestial evening. First of all, for some reason, there was a blimp circling downtown for several hours. And not just any boring old blimp--this blimp was lit up all pretty bright electric blue (if you could ignore the obnoxious DirectTV advertisements). It was circling from about 1-2 miles away, to about 4-5 miles away, almost due east of me. Orion was also rising in the east, and was especially bright, considering the urban location and the blimps and whatnot. The interesting thing is that, while nearby, the blimp would sail majestically in front of Orion, but on the far side of its loop, it actually appeared to be behind Orion. This was presumably because it was so much smaller and fainter, while bright Orion was large and prominent; similar, perhaps, to the moon-on-the-horizon optical illusion. In fact, Orion was so bright, that while running along, it appeared as if it should have passed in front of trees and rooftops, rather than behind them. No, I wasn't drinking--it was my perceptual system insisting that large, bright objects are closer than small, dim objects. In this case, my perception was only off by a factor of approximately a trillion.

Venus was also exceptionally bright in the southwest last night, and again this brightness made it appear very odd. It seemed to be floating significantly closer than the background, and this caused it to appear to undergo a phantom parallax compared to the stars.

Or maybe I'm just not getting enough oxygen while running.