Happy Tau Day 2026!

Happy Tau Day everyone! It seems like hardly any time at all since last year's Tau Day, which is probably a reflection of how utterly, overwhelmingly, busy I've been most of the time between now and then, only finally slowing down this past month-and-a-half. This slowdown (and some non-rainy weather at last) has allowed me to finally start getting to some projects around the house and yard that I identified soon after moving in, so that's been nice.

I don't have anything particularly tau-related to discuss, except for the fact that this week I started looking into Typst. Much like its inspiration \(\LaTeX\) Typst seeks to be a mark-up language that can be used for writing pretty much anything, including scientific or technical papers with complex formatting requirements or mathematical equations. I'll have more to say about it in the future when I've had more time to actually try it (so far I've only read through the tutorial), but it looks interesting. I've heard journals are starting to accept manuscripts typeset in Typst, so it seems to be catching on in the broader scientific world.

We'll see where that goes, though. A hui hou!

Celestial conjunctions and telluric temblors

Two nights ago was the closest approach of Venus and Jupiter in a conjunction, and despite the very rainy weather this summer the sky was actually clear enough just after sunset for me to get a few photos. Not entirely clear, mind you, but I think the ragged clouds drifting across the sky add to its effect.

Venus and Jupiter in conjunction. Captured with my Pixel 7 Pro.

Venus is the brighter of the two bright lights on the right, with Jupiter on the right. After the Sun and Moon Venus and Jupiter are the third- and fourth-brightest objects in the sky, so their conjunction is particularly impressive. Above and to the left of them you can faintly see Messier 44, the Beehive Cluster in Cancer.

Last night we also had an earthquake just as I was dropping off to sleep of about magnitude 4.7, with an epicenter about 23 km to the east. I realize now that I haven't mentioned the larger earthquake (magnitude 6.0) which happened back on May 22nd over on the western side of the island. (The largest earthquake I've felt since the magnitude-6.2 tremor I felt within a month of moving back to Hilo in 2021.) Both of these earthquakes felt pretty long; it's always hard to estimate time during an earthquake, but I've lived through enough that I feel pretty confident that these were on the longer side of ones I've experienced. Neither produced any damage here thankfully, though the larger one did some damage on the western side of Hawaiʻi island.

According to the USGS the large one was fairly deep, at 22.6 km; deep enough that it likely wasn't volcano-related, but was instead due to the ocean crust buckling and adjusting to the weight of the island. Last night's was also pretty deep, at 39.2 km, so I wonder if it's simply the crust adjusting on this side in response. As I like to say, life's never boring when you live on a volcano in the middle of the Pacific ocean! A hui hou!