Cracked Sky

The moon and Jupiter in a cracked sky

Amy Rose at Heaven On Earth commented: “So it seems you are becoming one who is hooked on astronomy.” I answered: “I’m always photographing the sky these days. That’s one of the most interesting things in my limited travels…” Since we moved out of downtown that was a longer commute and there were always photo opportunities, and since we presented papers at conferences remotely because of covid restrictions, almost all of my photography is from our property, the bosque, and the river. That includes a lot of sky photos day and night. Fortunately, we have interesting skies that are rarely the same, and the moon, planets, and stars are always changing positions and providing interesting challenges.

Dawn

The moon and Jupiter with close together this morning.

Prickly Pear

Oxymorons: Spunk being sweet. The pTerodactyl stared me down on the levee.

The Rio Grande reflecting once again

Storm over the Sandias

Eye

Glenda

We had a doozy of a thunderstorm last night. While I was out photographing the lightning, the lightning took out my gigabit switch. I turned my NAS drives back on after the power came back on and stayed on afterand they couldn’t connect to the network. I finally figured out the switch wasn’t working. I dug out an older switch that solved the connection problem, but at 100MB/s it’s the connection is really slow. I ordered a new switch and a UPS backup to plug the switch and NAS drives into.

The lightning bolt in the fifth photo was so close that the flash and the boom were simultaneous, and then a torrent of rain came pouring down. I got under the cover of the deck, but the rain was blowing into the deck through the wire, so I finally went inside.

Glenda giving me dragon eyes.

Early Beaver Shot The Bunny

Dawn

NE view of the Rio Grande on Wednesday evening. NE view of the Rio Grande this morning.

SE view of the Rio Grande on Wednesday evening. SE view of the Rio Grande this morning.

A beaver up and out at dawn.

Bunning through the fence.

Shots of the Bunny

pTerodactyl at dawn.

Spunk is a Cat Tree hugger.

We got a really violent thunderstorm this afternoon. The wind was strong, driving the rain sideways, and the visibility was low. The weather station recorded the event as producing 0.95 inches of rain. The wind-driven rain got almost everything on the deck wet.

The clouds right after the thunderstorm. Views looking east and west.

The clouds at 7:30 pm. Views looking east and west.

8:11 pm (official sunset). Views looking east and west.

A Hard Heart

Dawn

A hard heart in sun-baked clay

Low flow with Sandias in the background. The river normally flows at the top of the bank I’m standing on. The bank is about four feet higher than the water right now.

A rare view looking north from the middle of the Rio Grande. The river is low enough that I walked around the corner in the top left of the above photo. Normally, the only way to get this view would be from a floatation device or to swim out to the middle of the river because the water is normally from bank to bank at this point.

Sunset last night.

Spunk Rock!

Stormclouds building up threatening to rain. I hope it’s more than just a threat.

Happy Birthday G&G

Gwendolyn

Happy 4th of July. Today is Glenda’s and Gwendolyn’s birthday. They are two years old.

Glenda

Happy 4rth of July. This is as close to getting fireworks as I’m going to get tonight.

The moon manage to shine through the cloud cover last night. No moon tonight.

Pink, Silver, Spunk

“Hahahahahaha! I see you Brian”

Harry Hopper!

Ladybug in Shasta Daisy. Harry Hopper. Native bee on Shasta Daisy.

Spunk being a book prop.

I presented my paper at a conference, so now I have started on Christine Robertson’s new book “Three Years OF her Life”.

I broke in the book and got through a few pages by torchlight last night.

Spunk in a chair tunnel

Spunk hanging