Astronomy Tuesday

And speaking of babies, here are a gazillion baby blue stars.

NGC 4485 probably had a major collision with another galaxy sometime in the distant past, denting the galaxy structure and creating a spectacular stellar nursery.

Image credit: NASA, ESA; acknowledgment: T. Roberts (Durham University, UK), D. Calzetti (University of Massachusetts) and the LEGUS Team, R. Tully (University of Hawaii) and R. Chandar (University of Toledo)

Sunday bird blogging

I suspect even Canadians don't love their namesake geese; they're obnoxious, invasive pests.

But -- babies! I took this picture of goslings in the Greenway by the Hudson right after I came back from Savannah. I saw them -- or a similar flock -- yesterday in the same park and they're neck-high to their parents now, though still covered in down. They grow up so fast!

Saturday reflections

A rainy afternoon in New York City.

The Bird Girl

This statue by Sylvia Shaw Judson became famous when it appeared on the cover of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. (The bowls were not meant to symbolize the weighing of good and evil, but were intended to hold birdseed.)

It adorned a family plot in the Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah for almost sixty years, but after the book became a bestseller so many tourists visited the cemetery the family removed the statue. It's now in the Telfair Museum in Savannah, which is where I took this picture -- the background is just some atmospheric wallpaper.

More of the Historic District

Some of the architectural details I saw walking around Savannah. 

Or not walking around -- the picture on the bottom is the bar at the Hotel Indigo, where I was staying. I definitely preferred having my wine in an actual glass and sitting in one of those upholstered chairs rather than getting a plastic cup to go.

Buildings in the Historic District

Gimme shelter

An alley in Savannah.

I've always loved alleys and backstreets. They're the flip side -- literally -- of the storefronts and facades that are a city's public face, the story its citizens want to tell about themselves. And in the great cities, those stories are unique. There's always the sense that you couldn't be anywhere else.

Then you turn a corner to find the messy innards -- the garbage bins and utility poles -- and you could be almost anywhere in the world. 

I particularly like this picture because it reminds me why those tree-filled squares were so appealing. If you look closely at the figure of the man, you'll notice that he has no shadow. The sun was directly overhead, and merciless.

Astronomy Tuesday

This beautiful picture of Copernicus Crater on the moon shows the lunar terminator, or boundary between night and day, with sunrise just beginning to catch the walls of the crater.

Image Credit and Copyright: Sage Gray

The squares of Old Savannah

The Oglethorpe Plan

This is Oglethorpe Square, in the Savannah Historic District, not far from my hotel.

James Oglethorpe founded the city of Savannah and the colony of Georgia on the same day in 1733. Despite what I thought I knew from American History class, the early settlers were not convicts. Oglethorpe had worked on prison reform in Parliament, addressing the issues created when debtor's prisons were closed and the inmates released with no means of support. Though few debtors ended up settling in Georgia, Oglethorpe envisioned a colony of agrarian equality, where land ownership was limited to fifty acres -- no large plantations, no slavery.

This system lasted only until he left Georgia in 1743. He had more lasting success with his plan for Savannah, where the Historic District still follows his model of a series of wards, each consisting of a square surrounded by eight blocks of houses and commercial buildings. This means that you never have to walk more than three or four blocks in the wretched heat without encountering a pretty park with shady benches, and I probably sat in every single one of them.

Sunday bird blogging

A tale of two herons: a great blue heron near the hotel in Hilton Head, and little blue herons nesting on Pinckney Island.

The nest picture isn't great, but I love that bird on the top staring so intently.

Saturday reflections

Glass and metal turns these reflections in the Jepson Center museum in Savannah into a fine piece of abstract art suitable for one of their exhibits.