Could be better, could be worse


So, if I had to pick something dramatic to get back into taking photos, the total lunar eclipse of 2019 really isn’t a bad choice. And it was certainly better than most of my other options, which are bare trees, overcast skies, and mud. We’ve really had too damn much rain lately.

The title has a double meaning. In part, it refers to the conditions: we had reasonably clear read more

We now go live to Walkabout Headquarters


I’m doing this mostly to thumb my nose at the Insouciant Mr Bugg, who likes to bray that he’s doing more than me and putting things up first. This was taken eight minutes ago as I type this, at 10:58 pm EDT, or 3:58 am Zulu (otherwise known as Greenwich Mean or Coordinated Universal Time, UTC.)

More will be coming, but it’s wickedly cold out there right now with a stiff wind, so read more

Per the ancient lore, part 41


Another week down, and nothing to show for it here – seriously, you’re not missing anything on my end. You want me to write about, like, what I had for dinner? I could feature some images from my friends’ trip to Costa Rica, except they’ve been so busy since they got back I’ve only seen the photos of them crashing a whitewater raft…

So today, in recognition of read more

Per the ancient lore, part 28


Yes, this is a crappy image, even by my standards, but I include it for two distinct reasons. The first is, my Sunrise/Sunset folder (which we have now reached in the lineup) had way too few images in it for a long time, and this is one of only a handful from back in that time period – the next one will be better, I promise, but taken well after this one.

The second reason is, this was taken read more

Per the ancient lore, part 27


We be in the Space folder now, looking through squinted eyes (or at least I am) at a not-very-good photo of the moon taken through a telescope, but I include it because it’s one of the first that I took. A friend loaned me her 800mm Galilean telescope, a novice-level entry for reflector scopes, and I had endeavored to create a rig that would allow the camera to be mounted. read more

Just checking

Hey, are you out right now seeing how the Perseids meteor shower is doing? We finally have one that falls on a dark night, almost perfectly timed with the new moon, which is about the best point in the lunar cycle you can hope for.

It is, of course, raining like hell here. Remember this post from last year? Yeah. It’s kinda like having a white christmas, only not.

You can be looking up for things, but things aren’t looking up

Say, what’s the night sky been like recently where you are? What? You say the moon is nearly full? Wow, here too! What are the chances?

But of course, with a bright moon in the sky, it must be time for another meteor shower, or in this case, two back-to-back – well, technically overlapping: the Southern Delta Aquariids and the Alpha Capricornids. Actually both have been read more

Per the ancient lore, part 13


This week, the folder selection for our archive digital shots is ‘Space.’ If you’re viewing this image and thinking it doesn’t look very spacey, well, how you could be so ignorant? Look again, you oblivious savage. Those structures are launch pads 39-A and 39-B at the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, the very places where every space shuttle read more

Throwing down the gauntlet

It took them a while to get to this, but yesterday’s Astronomy Picture of the Day is a taunting response to a post of mine back in February, where I talked about capturing sunrise on the Tycho crater read more

And suddenly, it’s different


Or at least, it was for me.

This image has been sitting in my blog folder to feature even since I first happened across it, which was when it was posted to the Astronomy Picture of the Day back in October 2016 – I just never got around to doing the writeup for it. Which is a shame, because it represents this read more

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