Urban poetry

I'm guessing that somebody in some city planning bureau said, "Hey, those giant snowflakes look great on Fifth Avenue -- let's put some up on the West Side so you see them when you come out of the Lincoln Tunnel!"

Somehow the effect is not the same.

Astronomy Tuesday

The Hubble team was actually interested in that strange spiral object on the left -- possibly a planetary nebula -- rather than the enormous Christmassy local star photo-bombing on the right.

But as usual I'm more fascinated by all the tiny galaxies dancing in the background. This is your universe, ladies and gentlemen, and it's a beautiful one.

Image Credit: ESA, Hubble, R. Sahai (JPL), NASA

What the light is good for

I took this one yesterday, on West 39th Street.

I've always been fascinated by what remains of the Garment District, West Manhattan in the Thirties, just south of where I live in Hell's Kitchen. There are still manufacturers there, mostly high-end designers, and back when I cared more about how I dressed I went to the occasional sample sale, riding up scary elevators in warehouse buildings on a Saturday afternoon and leaving with a designer coat for $150 cash.

At street level there are the suppliers, fabric stores and trimming shops and sellers of sequins and jewelry supplies and sewing machines. I used to buy colorful odds and ends there to make jewelry, and I still have some beautiful brown cashmere fabric I bought for pennies at a going out of business sale that I will turn into a jacket someday.

I've been taking pictures there recently because it's an easy walk on even raw blustery December days, and I'm attracted by the bright colors of the bolts of fabric and racks of thread in window displays that appear not to have changed in the past fifty years. But this picture -- which I love -- makes me think that focusing on colors isn't the best way to capture this place.

Sunday bird blogging

Old stuff, still -- I have not had much luck with the light on days when I could conceivably have been hunting down the local avians, so I don't have any recent pictures to post.

This is an appropriately named goldeneye, in Grand Teton National Park.

Saturday reflections

An empty retail space in the midst of the fabric stores and notions shops on West 39th Street in the Garment District.

Urban poetry

This looks like the bell tower in some Tuscan hill town, but it's actually an anachronistic adornment on an old industrial building turned big box store in Chelsea.

From the hotel archives

Pretend this is a sunrise instead of a sunset and it's a pretty way to start the day.

Astronomy Tuesday

I know what you're thinking -- A nebula!

Silly Grasshopper. This may be a pretty picture of colorful tendrils of light, but that doesn't mean it's a nebula. This is more properly referred to as the Vela Supernova Remnant, the gases from a massive star explosion approximately 12,000 years ago.

But, you may ask, the Crab Nebula is also the result of a supernova -- why isn't it called the Crab Supernova Remnant? The easiest answer is that we've been looking at the sky for a long time, long before we had any idea what we were looking at, and the word nebula, from the Latin for cloud, was applied to any fuzzy-looking bright patch in the sky. This could and did include objects that we now know are galaxies and globular clusters and star nurseries as well as supernova remnants.

Things that weren't easily visible before the invention of high-powered telescopes got more precise names. End of lesson.

Credit and Copyright: Robert Gendler

Welcome to the working week

A fleet of bicycles on Sixth Avenue, ready to deliver Chinese food to hungry New Yorkers.

I don't quite get why they're festooned with empty plastic bags -- do the delivery guys have to bag the food themselves as it comes out of the restaurant? -- but it makes for a nice picture.

Sunday bird blogging

Another shot of the female cardinal from a few weeks ago, for Sally.

Urban poetry

Well, urban if the city in question is Sydney: learning to surf on Bondi Beach.

How ridiculously idyllic is this -- well minus the killer jellyfish and occasional great white?

Saturday reflections

Peering into the Block Arcade in Melbourne from the street outside.