Hubble comes of age

That’s right, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) was launched 33 years ago today, which makes it now a functioning adult if you’re into Tolkien – ‘course, I don’t think you can be seriously into Tolkien and a functioning adult simultaneously, which is simply an invitation to a flame war, to which I reply, Bring it,you Lazy Lobs

All that aside, we check out a couple read more

A low bar

As mentioned earlier, Friday’s outing also produced some sunset colors – more so than normal, but that’s not hard to do in this region of NC, at least. Somebody set the ‘Clearing’ setting for the sky to ‘Sunset’ and so the skies are typically wiped free of clouds at about that time. This time around, the cache was a bit slow in emptying and there remained read more

Just in time

We (meaning the Iconoclastic Mr Bugg and I) actually had an outing today, er, yesterday, whenever, and I have plenty of pics from that. Though I have another outing tomorrow, er, today, which should result in even more pics, but I need to get some sleep before then, so right now I’m just featuring some quick captures from this evening dark period.

I noticed when out at the lake that the moon read more

Mixed luck

Widely mixed, even.

So Buggato and I had another outing yesterday, once again to Jordan Lake because, while plants are indeed budding out around here, full bloom is a ways off meanwhile, we’re keeping an eye on bird activity at the lake. And in some cases, it was active.


While seeing double-crested cormorants (Nannopterum auritum) is fairly easy down there, yesterday read more

This doesn’t count


I did manage to set aside a little time to pursue some photos for National Wildlife Day but the wildlife was not cooperating very well at all – mostly what I got were some lackluster photos of solitary cormorants. And the images here are about as far removed from wildlife as possible, definitionally and linearly, but I saw this in the sky and had to grab the tripod to fire read more

This is not a comet


It’s probably not too far from what I would have captured if I tried, admittedly, and the intention was to try, just a little later on. This came Friday night, when I stepped out to check conditions and decided to shoot the first-quarter (“half”) moon real quick. This is not the first-quarter moon either, but the [ahem] ‘dagger’ in read more

Too cool, part 50: Hey sis!

Star formation is a long-drawn-out process, which we know from both basic physics and actually seeing it happening in telescopic views, though we can’t see change in real time. Gases and dust have to be pretty thick in some region of space, molecular clouds to provide the raw materials, which gradually coalesce under combined gravity and with the help of Core-Collapse Supernovae (CCSN,) which read more

More than six

A lot more. Ahhh…


With the sky bright but showing some hazy clouds and the first full moon of the year about to rise, I decided that I needed an outing, and headed down to (of course) Jordan Lake. There’s a spot on the causeway where both moonrise and sunset can be seen easily, so the only switching that I’d have to do would be, at worst, sides of the road. But read more

Living in the past IIX (or is it VIII?)

You know, why use four digits when you can use three? I never understood that convention for Roman numerals, but then again, Arabic doesn’t make any sense either – they’re just what we’ve been taught.

Anyway, another from 2012, and it wouldn’t be hard to figure out the exact date.


There was a lot of media attention regarding the transit of Venus in front read more

Living in the past I

I noticed in passing that the post count was at 2,470 at the end of last month, which meant that I could reach 2,500 posts at the end of the year – if I did better than I have been. I wasn’t worried about it – I’d prefer to post regarding content rather than arbitrary numbers – but then this afternoon I realized how I could meet this goal and have a bit of read more

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