2979: Sky Alarm

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Sky Alarm

Title text: During the day it also activates for neat clouds and pretty sunsets.

Explanation

The comic shows Megan and Cueball being alerted by a 'Sky Alarm' that a 'cool space thing' is happening. The alarm is triggered when a relatively interesting astronomical event occurs, for example, the Perseid meteor shower and blue supermoon that happened recently. Randall remarks in the caption how he wants this device and wishes it existed. Cueball and Megan (and by extension Randall) feel that they regularly miss events they'd like to see, and such a device would help prevent this.

The title text further specifies that he would want it to activate even for more common sky-related spectacles, such as interesting clouds and nice sunsets (which still can be very beautiful). In short, it would help its owner to not miss interesting outdoor sights.

Most recently before this comic, Randall referred to cool sky phenomena in 2971: Celestial Event. Quite a few such references preceded this (such as the aforementioned Perseid meteor shower), so they may have been on Randall's mind.

Transcript

[A rectangular device with a light on top and a label on its side, is seen resting on a stool to the left. It is activated and the light on top of it is glowing and a voice is emanating from it, maybe even speaking the siren part of the sound that comes between sentences. Cueball, sitting on an office chair at his desk, looks away from his laptop so he is now facing the device while Megan is on the other side of the desk running away from it towards the right edge of the panel.]

Label: Sky Alarm

Sky alarm: Weeee Ooooo Weeee Ooooo

Sky alarm: There's a cool space thing happening!

Sky alarm: Weeee Ooooo Weeee Ooooo

Sky alarm: Go outside and look up!

[Caption below the panel:]

I want this device.

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Discussion

♫♪ Happy Birthday to me, happy birthday to me... ♪♫ :) NiceGuy1 (talk) 04:55, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

I've tried to do just this by subscribing to a channel promisingly named "AstroAlert", which then proceeded to spam me 500 times per day with messages about a random meteor on the opposite part of the world. Woe. 162.158.110.200 05:15, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Hence the need for this alarm, to keep it LOCAL, :) That's the thing, any such thing needs a LOCATION, to limit results to what is locally relevant to each person. :) NiceGuy1 (talk) 05:19, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

This comic seems super simple, so I added as much explanation as I can think of... NiceGuy1 (talk) 05:19, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Local58 moment 💔 172.70.85.138 11:27, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

With that device, no work is ever going to be done again... D: 108.162.221.24 11:36, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

There is a nice site called Astronomy Picture of the Day that is like this. Alas, it is "A cool space thing happened three days ago - sorry you missed it". --Divad27182 (talk) 11:41, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Sounds like it needs a sky dome camera system (like they made for immersive filmimg) on the roof coupled with statistical analysis (mistakenly aka AI) to recognise and record 'interesting' things, coupled with localised alerts for known phenomena. A product for someone? RIIW - Ponder it (talk) 11:46, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Most cool astronomical events don't come up so suddenly that you need an alarm. We know about eclipses years in advance, meteor showers recur annually, comets have months of warning, and unusual auroras are usually known a few days early. Anything sudden will probably also be short-lived, so by the time you get outside it will be over. Barmar (talk) 15:26, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

If you're anything like me, you're often eager to see (predicable space phenomenon) and then get reminded of it a day too late when the photos starts appearing on the internet. Though that could just as easily solved with a reminder on a standard calendar app, if only you had something reminding youto set up reminders. What would be nice would be an app where you put in your location and it gives you the next week's A) weather forecast, and B) list of interestingly visible space thingies. 172.69.246.142 14:38, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Seems like there should be a name for these alerts, like "Amber Alert" for missing children. I nominate "Neil Alert" -- it should probably use Neil deGrasse Tyson's voice. Barmar (talk) 15:28, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Since the characters in the comic are the same as in the previous ISS comic, I like to think that they're in the ISS and Megan is getting ready to do an EVA (ignore the fact that such a desk wouldn't make sense, or the walking, or that prepping for the EVA would probably take well over a full orbit) 172.71.223.93 17:58, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Dang, we really cleaned up all the incomplete explanations, didn't we? Either that, or someone just went around and removed all the tags New editor (talk) 19:50, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

I'm not too sure on that actually, considering that there's been people using AI to write explanations. It's unfortunately a possibility that somebody used AI and then removed the tags. Hoping to be proven wrong though. 172.70.110.250 09:45, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Even before the latest craze for AI, premature Incomplete-Tag removal has been a thing. (IMO, if it's less than a week old, then there might be someone yet to check in.)

Not that the Incomplete status is actually what it used to be (the momentum of contributors hardly lets a new comic go up without a very rapid 'full' explanation edit, and there's basically no big 'backfilling' needed on historic articles for the most part). These days, the Incomplete tag is a friendly quirk, with the replacemet of the BOT bit with something homorously topical to the comic (with any luck!) being its main attraction, and (apart from possibly confusing newbugs to the site... though, honestly, any newbug to any site is always going to have to learn the local community culture, and it's the same with the Citation Needed tag) it no longer functions as an actual call to edit. Edits will happen immediately, and probably happen long afterwards, regardless. But it's become a form of treasured landmark for those who have seen more than a few articles being created and dealt with.

Then there are times when clearly someone has 'wiped the tag' off of even the last article (published within the last day, even). With or without it, the articles will get edited, but that'd be definitely premature. Believing that everything that can be said about the comic has been said about the comic (or, indeed, that all the wrong things said about it have been corrected/deleted) is an optomistic viewpoint on one's own understanding. Give it that week or so, and at least a day or so since the last actual edit, before presuming that you know the tag isn't needed any more. (As I said, it's actually not needed at all for attracting people's attention, but it still has that connection. But what you're really depriving people of is the latest consensus funny 'BOT replacement statement', which is a major part of our own independent contribution to this documentation of the comic. It belongs to us, rather than basically just being a reiteration of Randall's own humour. 172.70.58.3 11:17, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Does anyone know of anything like this? Something that will tell me about things like upcoming meteor showers, comets, auroras, etc. the day before, rather than hearing about it the day after from people who somehow knew about it? To this day I still have no idea how people find out about these things before they happen 162.158.154.134 (talk) 13:35, 1 September 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Offline, the national (and local) Weather broadcasts might give info on "what might be visible tonight". Or at least respond to the preceding News programme's "and finally..." if it features the note that supermoons will happen or aurora have a decent chance to and all that remains is the hope of clear sky. That's UK television, can't speak for wherever you are/what you might watch.

Online, it would depend upon what you can imagine wanting to know. Keep an eye on something obvious like space.com (which might have internal/external links to gateways that push notifications on various subjects) or go the full hog and search for "aurora alert", "meteor alert", "rocket launch alert" in every sort of phrnomenon that you think might (if timed/located well) interest you and be visible.

The comic device might be either configured to deal with everything the comic characters might be interested in, nails absolutely anything (without prejudice/selectability) or perhaps (over time) has an AI/heuristic element that 'learns' what random phenomena most interest you as it collates so many possible feed options (itself, or via its manufacturer's centrally maintained servers).

But it looks like a project ripe for a 'Maker' to try. Set up an Arduino/Raspberry Pi/whatever with a "speaker/siren and lights" housing and an internet connection with suitably configured feed-scraping commands run within it (or via a separate computer to which it connects) that makes a fuss whenever a suitable notification is passed. Add to that maybe some skyward-facing camera(s) with one degree or other of image-processing applied to their images to (for example) identify when a particularly nice sunset is happening with plenty of rose-tinted clouds. With enough foresight (and the right processing) it could pick up particularly aesthetic cloudscapes, the spontaneous murmurations of starlings, an amusing conjunction of contrails, the first snowflakes of winter or (back to space things) a surprise Earth-skimming bolide... whatever your imagination, technical tinkering and subsequent data-munging could get your "Sky's-Pi Alarm" (or whatever it is) to make its noises for.

I don't actually subscribe to anything (as proxy for my imagined self-contain/collating device), so I can't tell you any particularly good sources of info, but there'll be some out there. Like you can get earthquake alerts (or at least "yeah, we also know about it, be careful" semi-simultaneous detection), tornado alerts, flood aleets and other hobbyist/public-safety notification systems. 172.70.162.207 14:58, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

There's a link to subscribe to Google and Apple calendars at this site: https://www.nytimes.com/explain/2024/astronomy-space-calendar. L-Space Traveler (talk) 12:17, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

I wanted to mention that as well (but then had tech issues). Additionally, there is a rocket launch calendar [here https://bit.ly/SpaceLaunchCalendar] (tiny plus icon at the bottom right to subscribe). The same person also has a miscellaneous space-related events calendar (reentry, docking, spacewalks, …), but I have no idea anymore where I found it. The Google calendar ID is gp6s5vrim71h78d9fic2vd3gfg, if that helps anyone. The YouTube channel "Dr. Becky" has monthly space news, covering events of the past and coming month. Fabian42 (talk) 21:58, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

At the moment, a device like this might actually be useful for all of us who irritate their friends and family by going out every evening at around 10 when it's dark but Corona Borealis is still a fair distance above the horizon, because of this nova-in-waiting. There is a distinct chance it'll be cloudy on the nights it happens anyway, because that's reality: always pissing on the epic moment (this last part is a quote, here's the source) As with many glorious celestial events, if you don't know what it signifies, it'll just be another of many inconspicious little dots of light, and if you don't know or care what the constellations normally look like, you won't even notice. It'll still be an awesome once-in-a-lifetime event to watch, but be aware at all times that for all practical purposes (and for so-called "normal" people) the awesomeness is all in your head.* PaulEberhardt (talk) 15:30, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

see 1644: Stargazing, 2017: Stargazing 2 and 2274: Stargazing 3 for further reference. To be honest, I'm actually waiting on xkcd's take on the event as much as on T Coronae Borealis going boom already. PaulEberhardt (talk) 15:30, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

I previously changed the words from the alarm in the Transcript to italics, but I wasn't convinced that the noises from the alarm were also italicized. I see someone else changed them to italics as well, but I wonder if anyone else is of the same mind as myself. Ianrbibtitlht (talk) 14:16, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

The transcript shouldn't actually use (or rely upon) formatting, really, though saying something like :[The device emits sounds and speech, in italics] ''The things the device says'' in both description and markup would satisfy both human and non-human readers better than one method alone. I've not been involved in that transcript, probably won't, but it's the kind of expansion that I'd expect (done with more thought than this quick note, maybe). 172.70.162.207 14:58, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

NOAA weather radio: How has nobody mentioned the NWS NOAA weather radio system (162.400–162.550 MHz)? It has both continuous broadcasting of weather information as well as a special system of alert tones that many receivers can automatically recognize and then flag to the user in whatever way. It's kind of like this, except maybe that watches and warnings are about severe weather and not "cool stuff happening." JohnHawkinson (talk) 15:51, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

spaceweather.com - provides aurora alerts to your phone, solar flare warnings for expected solar activity, near earth asteroid fly pasts, meteor showers, geomagnetic storm warnings, and generally announces upcoming celestial events such as conjunctions, comets, predicted nova (eg T CrB), and more. Also provided imagery of past events too short or local for most people to catch including noctilucent clouds, rocket fuel dumps, fireballs, and rare forms of lightning. Also ongoing weekly measures of radiation levels at altitude from balloon flights over the continental US. 108.162.241.141 14:24, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

T Coronae Borealis

Paul mentioned T Coronae Borealis, but it's worth calling attention to it more specifically. It's a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see a (sort of) scheduled nova. It's unlikely you can actually witness the explosion in real time, but you can see the before (now) and after (any day now) without great effort:

Go outside tonight and look at the "before" so you will know it has changed when you see the "after". And the "after" may only last a day or two, hence, the appeal of the Sky Alarm. Or monitor other pages for updates, such as:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T_Coronae_Borealis

In September 2024, in the USA, it's visible after sunset, nearly overhead, and then (like everything) it sets in the west a few hours later. 172.71.154.20 00:52, 3 September 2024 (UTC)