Astronomy Tuesday

This is today's NASA astronomy picture of the day, a time-lapse photo of this week's Geminid meteor shower, taken by Juan Carlos Casado. That's the Teide volcano in the Canary Islands in the foreground.

We had yet another snow day in New York today, and the streaks of these meteors remind me of the snow coming down outside the windows all afternoon.

More snowy stuff

I've been waiting for an excuse to post this picture -- the second snowstorm in a week before winter has even officially started will definitely do.

This looks like an abstract photo collage, but it's actually a satellite picture from the European Space Agency of snow sweeping into Scandinavia. The dark tree-like silhouettes at the top are the fjords of Norway; that's Denmark in the lower righthand corner.

The ESA's Observing the Earth photo archive, here, is worth bookmarking. It's a nice reminder that there are Hubble-worthy wonders much closer to home.

Sunday bird blogging

One more juvenile frigatebird for the road, and we'll look for some American birds next week.

Saturday reflections

I decided to post some windows anyway, dark wavery slightly spooky windows that match the dark weather.

Snow day

A change of pace for this Saturday -- for the second time this week I woke up to a sky full of snow. The air darkens and blurs and we skid into the holidays.

Urban poetry

I wouldn't want to have to rely on this fire escape in an emergency (and the boarded up windows are a sign that, fortunately, no one will) but I am curious about just how it got so damaged, wondering what could twist and distort metal that's sitting a couple of stories above the street.

I took this picture in the summer and the building's a parking lot now.

Astronomy Tuesday

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.

This galaxy is Messier 77, as it appeared forty-seven years ago, when the light that recently found its way to a lens on the Hubble first left home. It's about 100 light years across, slightly larger than our galaxy.

There is a supermassive black hole in the center of the galaxy; in the visible spectrum, which is what this photo shows, it's just your run of the mill spiral galaxy. But if you had x-ray vision, you'd see an enormous brightness at the core from the black hole slurping up all those delicious stars.

Sunday bird blogging

Some more finchiness: three species on Santa Cruz island.

You can't see the cactus finch to the right as clearly, but in the two pictures above it's easy to see how closely these birds are related; the feathers and the eyes are almost identical. It really is just those very prominent beaks that distinguish them.

Saturday reflections

Some warm brick and wavy gold in the colors of the season.

Urban poetry

After eight months, the renovations are finally done and we've moved into our new offices.

So here's a last shot of the ceiling in the basement, a little spooky, a little abstract.

Astronomy Tuesday

This is something most of us haven't seen, or probably, wondered about: Mercury, photographed by the Messenger probe. That cratered surface, similar to our moon, means that it's been geologically dead for billions of years.

Although Mercury can be seen with the naked eye, and the earliest recorded reports are from the Assyrians in the 14th century BC, its closeness to the sun means that it can only be seen just after sunset or before sunrise when the relative positions of our orbits are favorable, usually just a few days a year. Or during a solar eclipse.

Sunday bird blogging

A warbler finch on Espanola.

There's one species of flycatcher in the Galapagos, and that's what I assumed this was at first -- it looks a little like a least flycatcher -- but that short stubby tail means it's one of Darwin's finches.

Unlike the mockingbirds, where each species is limited to a particular island, the finches occupy particular ecological niches, and the beaks of the various species and subspecies allow them to live side by side without competing for food. A finch with a bigger beak eats the cactus fruit, for example, while a finch with a smaller beak eats the base of the cactus plant. And those small pointed warbler finch beaks are perfect for catching insects, which is what this bird was focused on when I saw it.