Lighting Observations 3.2
1) DATE-TIME-LOCATION: 2/11/12 – 11:53 – Just outside white “bubble” next to uslesspan on north campus.
2) OBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION: I was walking to the soccer field at around noon on saturday. The sun was breaking up the clouds and reflecting off the white bubble just off the unispan by the football field.
3) SUBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION: My cousin was playing lacrosse at over the weekend. She goes to UCONN and lives in Philadelphia, so I hardly ever get to see her. I was very bummed when I woke up to see that the weather was not very nice and that it was so cloudy and snowy on the one day that her and my aunt and uncle were in town. Despite the cold weather and cloudy haze I put on many coats and my boots and headed out the door to go and meet them. I was walking on the North side of campus on the elevated road above the white “bubble” at the edge of campus. I was briskly walking to meet them at the field with my Starbucks sloshing around in my cup.
As I turned the corner and walked parallel to the bubble I realized that it had finally stopped snowing and it actually wasn’t that cold out. I looked up and the sun was actually starting to burn through the clouds and shine onto the sidewalk. The sky had been very dark, gray and threatening all morning. this was the first variation and contrast I had seen in the sky all day. For about the next thirty seconds the clouds continued to thin and eventually part. The intensity of the sun increased dramatically and the light shining through went from a deep gray to a warm and intense golden white. The hole in the clouds had a skewed triangular shape and was still not a huge spot in the sky. All around the spot the sky remained dark and colorless. After another fifteen seconds or so there was another break just below the first. As I looked up there were now two brilliant spots in the sky surrounded completely on all sides with the darkness of the snowy clouds. As the two spots grew to their maximum intensity my eyes shifted their focus to the bubble. this pure white mass was catching all of the yellow light in the sky and casting a blanked of golden rays across the bubble. The white of the bubble reflected all of that golden light as it was the most intense and colorful source of illumination in the sky. I was thrilled that I was looking up to see this beautiful moment of the golden parts in the sky illuminating the bubble and creating a cold and warm color contrast with each other and then I realized that the weather was perfect and just as I arrived on the field, my cousin scored the second goal of the game.