Pity the poor driver

...who thought that taking 42nd Street yesterday evening was a good idea.

In New York, there's always a crowd

I don't know what it was like on the other major crosstown streets, but on 42nd Street, people started congregating an hour before the sun actually set.

More Manhattanhenge

Turned down the exposure, turned up the drama.

Manhattanhenge

A few times a year, the rising or setting sun lines up with the grid of crosstown streets in Manhattan, a phenomenon that has been dubbed Manhattanhenge. The few times that I've remembered it was happening it was cloudy or raining, so last night's sunset was the first time I've actually seen it.

Here's the view from 42nd Street.

Astronomy Tuesday

Most of the objects in Messier's famous catalog of “shiny things in the sky that kind of look like comets but aren't” are nebulae or galaxies or star clusters.

Messier 24 isn't actually an object—it's a gap in the interstellar dust clouds allowing a glimpse of the stars on the other side, some of which are 10,000 light years away.

Image Credit and Copyright: Gabriel Rodrigues Santos

Sunday bird blogging

Here's another picture of the pileated woodpecker in Sapsucker Woods last month.

It's not as sharp as I would like, because it was busy pecking away like a little feathered jackhammer, as you can tell from the bits of tree debris flying through the air.

Saturday reflections

The Loch in Central Park offering a lovely abstract view of late spring in the city.

And this is how I feel today

 Chewed up, spit out, wrung dry. Such a horrible week that I can't even feel that relieved to be done with the semester.

(This cardinal, by the way, is fine, just molting. Strip away the feathers and you can really see the little dinosaurs underneath.)

Sunday bird blogging

I have twice been asked by novice birders to identify a bird that turned out to be the extremely common American robin. Cardinals are not quite that common, but boy, are they easy to identify. Even easier than a robin.

Saturday reflections

I found this reflection in the back window of a car on my phone. I know that I took it last month because my phone tells me so, but where exactly on the island of Manhattan I was, I don't know.

Astronomy Tuesday

I'm in the mood for the abstract beauty of a nebula tonight, and this colorful deep field image of the Cat's Paw nebula in Scorpio checks all the boxes.

Image Credit and Copyright: Stefan Steve Bemmerl & Team Wolfatorium (Hakos/Namibia)

Sunday bird blogging

I wasn't able to get close to this guy, but people get so excited when a prothonotary warbler shows up, I feel compelled to share this less than satisfying picture anyway. There were literally crowds with long lenses lining the banks of the Loch in Central Park for the three days he was in town last month.

Saturday reflections

I don't remember where this was. Manhattan, I assume, but I can't be more specific than that.

In ten days or so when the semester is over, I hope some of my neurons will go back to handling mundane tasks like remembering that I have already bought milk and don't need more and putting water in the kettle before I attempt to boil it. In the meantime, I have three extra quarts of milk in the refrigerator, and making coffee in the morning is sometimes taking twice as long as it should.

Wood and water, part 2

I love the textures of those trees.

Wood and water

Astronomy Tuesday

Here's another eclipse in our solar system—that dark spot on Jupiter is the shadow of Ganymede, Jupiter's largest moon, as seen by the Juno probe in February.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS; Processing and License: Thomas Thomopoulos

Sunday bird blogging

I don't believe that Canada geese need a reason to be obnoxious. This pair, in the reeds at Sapsucker Woods, was making enough racket to be heard in Connecticut.

The woods in color

Okay, there wasn't all that much color. But the light from that pearly gray sky was magical.

Saturday reflections

Sapsucker Woods again, this time in black and white.

I taught my final observed lesson of the semester on Tuesday, and did my big presentation for my Assessment class on Tuesday night, so the next few weeks should be less hectic. It rained all day yesterday, and I actually spent the afternoon lying on my bed watching Netflix. It was heavenly.

Astronomy Tuesday

When I was lucky enough to see the total eclipse in 2017, one of the things I marveled at was the great cosmic coincidence where our moon and the sun appear to be the same size from Earth, making eclipses possible.

This is not the case on Mars, where the distinctively potato-shaped Phobos passing in front of the sun is more like a transit than an eclipse. And Perseverance was there to record it for us.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS/SSI

Sunday bird blogging

Another bird from Sapsucker Woods.

American Bitterns are notoriously hard to spot because they're shy and they tend to hide in the reeds and grasses. So this isn't a great picture, but I was lucky to get one at all. I love that eye!