Starry Night
We’ve had a relative rarity the last few nights: clear skies. This area has been abnormally cloudy the last six weeks or so; we went an absurdly large number of days without seeing the sun, and of course, seeing the moon and stars was also a no-go.
But the clouds have moved on at last–as I write this the sun is setting now–and the other night I got these two photos of the night sky, with my phone. First is my beloved Orion the Hunter, with Canis Major and Sirius visible to his left:
Next I was able to get a shot of the Pleiades star cluster. This photo didn’t turn out super well, but it’s still cool that I walk around with a gizmo that can capture a shot of a star cluster that isn’t very well visible to the naked eye. The Pleiades are the small blob of five stars in the center of the photo.
Here’s what the Pleiades look like in all their glory:
(via)
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Moonlight, through the trees
Earthquake? Pshaw! Bring on the ICE SHARK!!!
The Four-Legged State of Affairs
Recent adventures in Pet-land:
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When winter remembers that it can be beautiful too
Launch
What an amazing photo:
An external high-definition camera on the International Space Station captured the launch plume of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket after it had ascended to Earth orbit following its liftoff on Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The space station was flying 262 miles above the Atlantic Ocean just after an orbital sunset at the time of this photograph.
Via.
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Play “Misty” for me
I took this on the 31st, when our post-storm warm-up was progressing along to the point that the woods behind the house were shrouded in winter mists. There’s always something magical about mists and fog, something evocative that makes it seem as if the world is shrouding itself….
(By the way, I’ll be taking a couple of days off from posting here, but I’ll be back either Monday or Tuesday. Meanwhile I’ll be starting my next newsletter installment, huzzah!!!)
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I coulda been a rock-star photographer….
Last Thursday night, The Wife and I attended the evening performance of Trans-Siberian Orchestra, which comes around to these parts every December. Lots of people mock TSO, but we always have a grand time when we go. This was our third time (our first was something like 15 years ago!), and we enjoy it more each time. There are so many different genres of music represented under the big tent of “Christmas music”, so why not hair-metal arena-style prog rock?
Anyway, here are some photos from the show that I took just with my phone.
Since the Christmas Blizzard hit the very next day, this concert–less than a week ago as I write this–feels like an epoch ago….
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A town made for winter….
East Aurora, NY at Christmastime is one of the loveliest places I know. We were just there the other day for lunch at one of our favorite restaurants and then some shopping at Vidler’s, a onetime five-and-dime store that is now a destination in itself. I took this photo, and then applied a Prisma filter. Doesn’t this look like the kind of place where a Hallmark Christmas movie would be filmed?
