Saturday reflections

Here's a little color, in that soft December light that I want to hoard like a miser against the long dark days ahead.

Urban poetry

And when I say urban, I do mean New York -- specifically, the Bronx. I took this picture while waiting at a bus stop a couple of weeks ago. It had to be black and white.

Toronto evening

I meant to post this earlier but somehow this week got away from me -- one last look at Toronto.

I'm going to Quebec City for Christmas, rounding out my Year of Seeing Canada. Next year, if all goes well, I will be crossing an ocean or two again.

Astronomy Tuesday

I didn't post any astronomy pictures for the first several years I did this blog, and I didn't start regular Astronomy Tuesdays until 2013. Still, that's hundreds of pictures and I don't remember most of them, so the first thing I do when selecting images now is to check if I've run anything similar before. (Not that anyone is likely to notice if I did, but still....)

The first two pictures that caught my eye for today turned out to be repeats.  Then I saw this one, and I knew immediately that it was new, that in fact I'd never seen anything quite like it before.

So may I present: Hoag's Object! This ring galaxy is unusual for the large gap between the old red stars at the core and the new blue stars in the outer ring. Astronomers aren't sure how it originated -- maybe a collision between galaxies, or maybe this was a barred galaxy that somehow lost its bars. And of course, I always love seeing more galaxies in the background; in this image there's even another ring galaxy visible in that dark gap at about seven o'clock.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble; Processing: Benoit Blanco

Sunday bird blogging

It's rainy -- mixed with a little snow -- here in New York today, so the bright colors of a cardinal are more than usually welcome.

Random things I saw in Toronto

More random than usual -- just some streetscapes from a chilly city.

Saturday reflections

It's been a long time since I posted a Geometries shot, but I think these stairs reflected in the square windows on Dundas Street in Toronto would qualify.

Urban poetry

The Hockey Hall of Fame (or, in French, Le Temple de la renommée du hockey) in downtown Toronto. This building doesn't exactly scream “hockey” to me -- the building used to be the Bank of Montreal -- but it definitely looks like a temple.

Astronomy Tuesday

This is NGC 6995, the Bat Nebula. I think I see a bat, though it looks more like Batman to me.

Image Credit and Copyright: Josep Drudis

Life drawing

This was possibly my favorite thing at the AGO -- they had easels and a model available for sketching. I am not sure who, or what, that model is supposed to be, but anyone willing to go shirtless in Toronto in November certainly has enough courage to pose for strangers.

AGO arches

I loved the architecture in the AGO as much as the art. Here are some of the arches, in black and white.

Your looks are laughable, unphotographable

Bonus reflections.

Let's Survive Forever is an infinity mirrored room  by Yayoi Kusama at the AGO.

You have to make a reservation, and when I showed up at my reserved time, I got bumped to the front of the line because I was solo, paired up with another woman. There's a maximum of four people allowed inside at any time, but our group was just the two of us. First we had to divest, like supplicants at the altar of art, leaving purses and coats in a box. Then the young man with a stopwatch knocked on the door to notify the previous group that their time was up, and we were shut inside for our sixty second visit.

I did take pictures, and they were mostly useless -- it's really just a mirrored room, with mirrored balls on the floor and ceiling, but I laughed out loud when I walked in because it was just so fun.

This was the one thing worth photographing -- a column in the middle of the room that created an apex of all the reflections. Still makes me smile.