July 15th seems to have been a slow photography day throughout the range of my digital stock, for unknown reasons, so we have only two for this week’s post, and both from the same day at that, in 2013. I can’t remember where I was when I shot the female dark phase eastern tiger swallowtail (Papilio glaucus) above, and have never tried to identify the flower
Category: Astronomy
Needs something
One of my background projects, along with everything else that I’ve been involved with in the past couple of weeks, has been the attempt to capture images of comet C/2020 F3, mostly known as NEOWISE, which has been visible just before dawn for large portions of the northern hemisphere, and recently moved into being visible after sunset as well. The views are to the north, roughly at 30°
Another try
So, Monday night I went down to the lake to try again on those focus and tracking tests. The light was again ideal, only this time, it remained that way until the sun disappeared behind the trees. Unfortunately, I saw even fewer birds than before. I may be partially to blame here, since we’re now past nesting season and the adults have much less to do with no babies to feed.
Almost totally dry
So, I went out Monday night/Tuesday morning to try and catch something for the Lyrids meteor shower that we are currently undergoing. For once, we had ideal conditions, or as ideal as I can possibly achieve in this location: no moon, clear skies, and I traveled down to Jordan Lake to get the darkest skies possible within, oh, thirty kilometers or so (which isn’t all that dark,
This week needs some restraint
There’s a bunch of stuff going on this week that you should already be absolutely aware of and I could avoid posting entirely, but just in case…
This entire week is the Lyrids meteor shower, peaking around Tuesday but hey, meteor
What makes it special
On this date, we remember the man from above, the carpenter’s son who changed the world for all humankind and brought in a whole new culture, outlook, and future by his selfless actions, regardless of how anyone personally feels about it within circles that somehow dismiss his presence. So today, let’s all keep him in our hearts, and strive to emulate the courage and convictions of
A splash of evening color
Just a quick pair of pics, taken less than an hour ago. There will be another post coming, hopefully before the day is out, that has more of those words that you all love so much, but for now, we have color.
And a moon. And if you look closely, Venus. I think it’s Venus.
Yeah, just checked through Stellarium – it’s Venus. You might see it better later on, depends.
Something from yesterday
The images in this post are going to reflect more of my casual shooting stance last night, and I apologize. I went out solely to see if I could capture something in the few minutes that it might be visible, and I did, but didn’t have my heart set on astrophotography and it shows.
Above, a crescent moon was showing notable earthshine on the ‘shadowed’ portion while I was out, so
Moon Face Monday
Hey hey it’s Old Man Al D here with a new topic, “Moon Face Monday!” Today we have a first quarter moon giving way to gibbous phase, taken just hours ago! “Gibbous” comes from the Latin word gibbus, meaning ‘humpbacked,’ which I suppose could be said to apply to such a phase, if you ignore the obvious aspect of bierbeibei,
Brand spanking
It’s about 2:30 AM as I type this – again, my sleep ‘schedule’ is totally wacked and yet, completely typical for me. And knowing that the posting date will show and that some astute reader may refer to this for confirmation of conditions, I feel somehow obligated to refer to events as ‘yesterday’ even though they were a few hours back and all that. But yeah.
Saturday
