The Kobe Luminaire

The Luminaire is one of Kobe's yearly festival. It started in 1995 to commemorate the Great Hanshin earthquake that hit Kobe that same year. Thousands of people died and many buildings destroyed. I also read somewhere that each light represents a life lost during that unfortunate day. This year, it started around 5th of December until the 15th (am not sure). From JR-Osaka station, I took the train to Kobe and went down Motomachi station where I met my friends. Thousands of people went that day and enjoyed the lights of the Luminaire. I even bought a Kansai-Train pass with the Luminaire in the picture :)

A smiley in the sky...

I was going back to the laboratory yesterday (Dec 1, 2008) around 5:30pm for the Discrete Math group study when I looked up in the sky. The sun sets much earlier during autumn so at 5:30 the sky was dark. I always loved looking at the sky, the stars and the moon during the night, and the clouds and blue skies during the day. But yesterday's moon and stars were quite different. They seemed to be smiling at me happily. Hmmm, well, the other star was smaller, and so it looked like an unbalanced face. But maybe, the "face" was doing a *wink*.

So I sent a message to my friends hoping that one of them will take a picture of it. The one i took from my mobile phone was not very clear.

Top photo: from my mobile phone.

Bottom photos: taken by Igor

I thought I was the only one admiring the moon and the stars last night. But no. Here it is, a gallery of pictures of the same stars and moon I saw last night:

http://www.news.com.au/gallery/0,23607,5036115-5007150-01,00.html

We learned that the stars were Venus and Jupiter, in rare position with the crescent moon. And indeed it seemed like a smiley in the sky.

But today, it was different. It was the opposite. The crescent moon was on the upper part of the stars and it looked like a "frown" and not a smile. Kinda sad... hmmm maybe my feelings were drawn from the sky I saw today. Well, maybe...