Astronomy Tuesday

BOOO!

Here are some ghostly nebulae for Halloween night.

That's the Claw Nebula on the right reaching its scary hand to the poor little Bubble Nebula to its left.

Image Credit and Copyright: Rolf Geissinger

While strolling through the park one day

It poured rain all day yesterday, leaving me mostly housebound and restless. Fortunately I took a long walk in the park Saturday, and it was gorgeous, peak October; though the leaves are still mostly green, enough of them have fallen to create a nice carpet of crunchiness on the paths.

Sunday bird blogging

A white-throated sparrow in the park yesterday.

Saturday reflections

Times Square, with the color saturation turned up to 11.

Urban poetry

Continuing with the theme of black and white: a random street photograph that came out better than it should have. I just liked the way her curls were caught under the strap.

Astronomy Tuesday

Cassini is gone now, but fortunately there are still new images to see from its amazing journey around Saturn -- NASA released this stunner yesterday. If I ever managed to get a picture half this good from a terrestrial subject I would be a very happy photographer.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Sunday bird blogging

Rooting around in the shadows under the trees, this grackle was barely visible. Then it moved into a patch of sunlight and BOOM! an explosion of color. I love that iridescence.

Saturday reflections

The lake in Central Park, where a month into autumn the leaves have yet to turn.

It's still warm enough to go out without a jacket, so the trees are probably as confused by the weather as the rest of us.

Geometries

I haven't revisited this theme in a while.

This new tower in Lower Manhattan is nicknamed the Jenga Tower, for obvious reasons. Officially, it just goes by its address, the much less whimsical 56 Leonard Street.

While I'm inclined to dislike on principal any high rise tower in a low-rise neighborhood -- Tribeca, where this is located, is mostly lofts and brownstones that top out at 6-8 stories -- at least this is more fun than the skinny ultra-tall towers going up in Midtown.

Urban poetry

Pink pajamas hung out to dry on Henry Street.

This is actually my favorite picture from last weekend. I was on my way to the Henry Street Settlement House, one of the original charities providing health care and education for the immigrants on the Lower East Side, but that building, while fascinating as a historical site, wasn't terribly photogenic.

These pajamas on the front stoop, next to the mop, on the other hand, were definitely something I don't see every day.

Astronomy Tuesday

NGC 1365 is a beautiful example of a barred spiral galaxy. You can clearly see the star-forming regions showing up as bright blue in the arms and at the ends of the bar. All that work, just to feed the supermassive black hole at the galaxy's core.

Image Credit & Copyright: Dietmar Hager, Eric Benson, Torsten Grossmann

Closeups of the mosaics

The Rolling Bench

Outside the mausoleum is where things get a little strange. There is a public art installation from the 1970's called The Rolling Bench surrounding the building. It's a series of mosaic-covered concrete benches, built with the assistance of the neighborhood children.

It's charming, but maybe more suited to a zoo or a playground than encircling the tomb of a war hero-slash-President of the United States.

Inside

Apart from the rotunda, the interior is simple and classical: a lot of marble, a little tinted glass, and the two sarcophagi on a lower level, with some busts of vaguely related historical figures (that's Sherman in the artsy shot between the two tombs.)

I am always a sucker for a good rotunda

Who's buried in Grant's Tomb?

This past weekend was Open House New York, the annual celebration of design and architecture. I missed last year because I was in Iceland, and though most of the places I really wanted to see required winning the reservation lottery, and I didn't, I saw several interesting buildings over the course of the weekend.

These are pictures from Grant's Tomb -- or more formally, the General Grant National Memorial -- which overlooks the Hudson River at 122nd Street. Despite having spent most of my adult life living in Manhattan, the only times I'd ever seen it had been through the windows of a car or a bus on my way to someplace else. But the Book Review had Bill Clinton's review of Ron Chernow's new biography of Grant on the front page this weekend, and I realized that I didn't actually know that much about him. All I remembered from high school history were the scandals and corruption -- none of them involving Grant himself. I didn't remember, or never knew, that he fought to get the Fifteenth Amendment passed, guaranteeing the right to vote regardless of race, and created the Justice Department to enforce Federal law in the South and oppose the Ku Klux Klan.

So I hopped on the M5 and went uptown to pay my respects.

(Who's buried in Grant's Tomb? is considered a trick question by the way not because the answer is obviously Grant -- and his wife Julia -- but because they're in sarcophagi and so not technically buried. One more thing I never knew until yesterday.)

Sunday bird blogging

Just because they're common doesn't mean they aren't beautiful: a female house sparrow in Central Park.

I had an interesting experience yesterday; a young woman stopped me on a street corner and asked if she could take my picture. I said yes, of course, after laughing and showing her my camera and explaining that I'm usually the one asking. (I'd just walked through Chinatown, where I'd wanted a picture of one of the women selling lychees, but they all said no.) She said she liked my shirt, a flowery rayon more suitable for a tropical vacation than the Lower East Side of Manhattan on a gray but extremely humid day, as though she felt she had to explain why she picked me out.

It didn't really matter. At this point I certainly owe the random street photographers of the world my willingness to be on the the other side of the camera. So I smiled and she took two pictures, and she thanked me, and we went our separate ways.

Saturday reflections

I am endlessly entertained by the spectacle of generic city office towers reflected in the windows of other generic city office towers, turning them into something Gaudi might have dreamed up.

These two examples are in Rockefeller Center.

Urban poetry

One more picture of the Comic Con gang.

The figures are a little blurry in this one but I love the vibe.

Astronomy Tuesday

Another image of Pluto, as captured by New Horizons in 2015. The pebbly texture in the center of the image is caused by huge towers of methane ice, as tall as skyscrapers, at high altitudes near Pluto's equator.

Image Credit: NASA, Johns Hopkins Univ./APL, Southwest Research Institute

Two more

Comic Con portraits

These are two of my favorites.

More Comic Con

The people who go to the trouble to create these wonderful costumes are, not surprisingly, much more willing than your average pedestrian to pose for a photo if asked.

Comic Con

I was walking over to the Whole Foods on Sixth Avenue yesterday afternoon when I found myself waiting to cross the street next to two men in Spiderman costumes. That's not unusual in my neighborhood, and I assumed they were on their way to work to pose for pictures with tourists in Times Square. Then I passed another Spiderman. And another.

It wasn't until I was walking back and found myself behind two men wearing identical bright blue wigs that I realized it must be Comic Con weekend. So I went back out in the late afternoon just as the sessions were ending for the day, this time with my camera.

Sunday bird blogging

I'm not sure what kind of bird this is...

Just kidding. Obviously it's a Lesser Thick-kneed Babblecatcher, very common in Central Park this time of year.

It's true, and somewhat embarrassing, that until I started paying attention to birds in the early part of this century, I had never seen a cardinal -- this despite years of living on the East Coast by then, and countless excursions to Central Park and other wooded areas (and the fact that they are occasional visitors to the trees and fire escape outside my bedroom window.)

I've always been someone who walked around with my head in the clouds and I've written before about how taking up photography forced me to pay more attention to the world around me, but seriously -- not to notice these very conspicuous creatures? That is some heavy-duty mindlessness.

Saturday reflections

Summer as reflected in the window of a house in Sunriver.

Urban poetry

The side of a dumpster parked on West 52nd Street makes a beautiful piece of abstract art.

Astronomy Tuesday

These wisps of color, like a silk scarf blowing in the breeze, are called the Veil Nebula.

It's the remnants of a supernova that would have been easily visible from Earth 7000 years ago, almost as bright as a waxing moon before fading back into invisibility after a few weeks. I wonder what the humans of the time, for whom the wheel was the cool new technology, made of the spectacle.

Credit & Copyright: Mikael Svalgaard

Sunday bird blogging

Now that the weather is finally catching up to the calendar, here's a look back at summer, with a pretty duck in Sunriver.

I have a meeting with a contractor this afternoon about renovating my kitchen, and my stomach is already in knots remembering the drawn-out painful bathroom debacle of 2016. I just keep whispering to myself, It's worth it in the end. It's worth it in the end.