There was an alignment of the moon, Mars, and the Pleiades this morning, but the thin cloud cover almost blocked out Mars and the Pleiades in the shots where the moon has details. Click on the photos to see more details.
Dawn
Jupiter with four moons and deep space
Down by the river where we like to go
Walked a coyote wouldn’t you know
He stopped and he squatted and gave it a squeeze
Not a care in the world he was quite pleased
Hare date 8-15 in the blessed year of our mother goddess Freyja two-thousand twenty-two. The human who walks around shooting everyone with a Bazooka was trying to irrigate. After the water that came flooding in, and forced me out of my culvert, stopped, the bazooka-wielding Paparazzo walked out to the Acequia Madre and discovered the water had stopped running in the mother ditch. Word had it that the giant diesel pumps up north that fill the Acequia Madre from the Rio Grande went south, so now il Paparazzo has to finish irrigating in the wee hours of the morning under the crescent smile of Máni.
¡Adios muchachos y muchachas!
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
A clear dawn
The Rio Grande and Sandias at sunset last night.
The Rio Grande reflecting
Odd flower out. Echinacea in Brown-Eyed Susans
The moon on the left was taken with my iPhone through a telescope* at 11:00 pm last night. The moon on the right was taken with the Bazooka at 6:00 am this morning. Click on the photos to see the details.
An attempt to get Jupiter and its moons through a telescope with the iPhone*. It came out nicely abstract.
On the left are Jupiter and its moons taken at 11:30 pm last night. On the right are Jupiter and its moons taken at 6:00 am this morning. Both photos were taken with the Bazooka.
Jupiter taken with the Bazooka at 11:30 pm last night. You can almost see the patterns in Jupiter’s clouds.
Jupiter and the moon at 6:00 am this morning.
Saturn is at its peak opposition to the sun tonight. However, a storm rolled in, and the sky is overcast, so I am going to have to strike photographing Saturn tonight.
*I held my iPhone lenses to the eyepiece on the telescope. It’s difficult to align the correct lens and get a really good photo with three lenses on the iPhone. The moon came out pretty well. Jupiter was another matter.
Sunset last night.
Clear dawn this morning.
Sunflowers are blooming.
Supermoon on a clear night last night.
The full August Sturgeon Supermoon rose through the clouds again last night.
Jupiter and moons
Jupiter in the pre-dawn clouds
Dragon wakes with a flaming yawn
Burning the heavens, scorching stars
Its fire lights the pre-dawn sky
Jet pierces the fiery phalanx
The last supermoon moon of summer covered in clouds like lavender lace.
A huge wasp buzzing around near the ground.
Nighthawks
Dawn
A teenage toad frowning with a frog face.
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.
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
Off Center & Not Even 