Saturn At Opposition

Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and possibly Nunki seen on the righthand edge of the photo. I couldn’t find anything else that would be that bright to the right of Saturn in the charts.

What is Saturn opposed to? The sun, of course. On August 14th Saturn will be at its brightest. I’m hoping for a clear night.

These images of Saturn were taken through the night into the early morning hours using my Bazooka lens (Canon 400mm ƒ/4 DO) on a Canon 7D Mark II when I could see Saturn through breaks in the clouds.

The moon peeking out through a break in the clouds.

The moon finally broke free from the clouds.

Jupiter with three of its moons. I was surprised I got Neptune on the right.

Ku Koo

Rio Grande high*
Brontosaurus in the clouds
Redish mountains sigh

*I don’t write Haiku. I prefer “in the style of Haiku” or 575 or “Spunku” or “Timku” as some people have suggested because, in my personal opinion, since English is not a monosyllabic language, it creates issues for Haiku. The above poem is a good example: most English speakers pronounce “Grande” as “Grand” (one syllable) so the first line only has four syllables when “Grande” is pronounced as “Grand”. Therefore, an “is” would be needed as in “Rio Grande is high” to have five syllables in the first line. However, in Spanish “Grande” is pronounced “Grandae” making it two syllables. The first line has five syllables if “Grande” is pronounced as it is in Spanish (that’s how I pronounce it). Grande would have two syllables pronounced in Old English, also.

If the first line were “Rio Grande is high” (five syllables by the standard English pronunciation, six syllables in Spanish) the line is more descriptive of the water level in the Rio Grande when the photo was taken. However, by leaving out the verb in the first line, more ambiguity is introduced in the first line.

Three-thirty AM
You know where Jupiter is
Shining through the clouds

Dawn

Dusk

Moon behind clouds

You Beavers Lighting Up Our Lives

Got lighting? There was six beaver in the river at Beaver Point tonight.

Jupiter’s moons were in a formation I had not seen before. When I looked at the image on my camera’s screen at 5:00 am I thought I was moving the camera and getting a double image of the moons, but since Jupiter is round, the moons were really sitting side by side.

The moon through a thin layer of clouds.

Frog Art

Dawn’s pinks and purples
Wait for Sun to show its face
Daybreak colors pale

What happened to eggs
Ditch is dry brutal drought’s woes
We will never know

From flatulent frogs
Bubbles rise ripple water
Laughing in the lake

Bullfrog watches me
From a puddle drying up
Ditch has done gone dry

It is so like men
Breaking wind water bubbles
pulled a frog’s finger

Trees form a green crown
Against the sunset’s orange grays
Another day gone

Green Eggs No Ham

Dawn

What looked like moss in the shallow water running at the bottom of the irrigation ditch turned out to look like tiny eggs, but I have no idea what laid them if they are eggs. It looks like thousands upon thousands of eggs and it’s hard to imagine what could lay so many eggs.

A closer view of what looks like eggs on the bottom of the ditch.

Sliver moon through the slats in the miniblinds

The clouds cleared after sunset and we were able to see the sliver moon through the window in Beaker’s and Søren’s room.

The moon through the window.

The Rio Grande was still running higher this afternoon from the rains up north.

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.

Gully Washer

Clouds were building up in the late afternoon. We got a fifteen-minute gully washer at 6:40 pm. Turn up the volume on the video and listen to the rain.

The sky 40 minutes before the storm looking east, west and southeast.

A tiny rainbow before the storm