Saturday reflections

 

End of the semester crunch and everything is running late, but here are some very cool reflections from the Javits Center.

Thanksgiving

A picture from Iceberg Alley in Antarctica, for no particular reason except that I find this strange beauty appealing today. 

I'm tempted to say that it's a reminder that I once had another life, where I went places and did things, but that both is and isn't true. I've certainly had other lives -- when I was a child, when I was a student, when I worked in kitchens and storefronts and offices -- and some of them seem distant enough to feel as though they belong to someone else, like a story I once read and have half-forgotten now.

But this weird time we're all living through is just another chapter, even if the plot twists are getting more and more unlikely. It's still my life, in the only world I've got. 

And I'm thankful to be here.

Astronomy Tuesday

The last time I posted a picture of the Helix Nebula, I said that it looked like an eye. 

But this is more like a giant blossom, though maybe reminiscent of the kind of tissue paper flowers we used to make to decorate the gym in high school.

Image Credit and Copyright: CFHT, Coelum, MegaCam, J.-C. Cuillandre (CFHT) and G. A. Anselmi (Coelum)

Sunday bird blogging

 

There were two titmice on my fire escape this morning, so here's one of their (slightly blurry) relations from a few years back.

Saturday reflections

 

More of an abstract than a reflection, maybe, but I'm so in love with that blue I really don't care.

Such stuff as dreams are made on

 

One of those fortunate mistakes that turns out better than the error-free pictures I was trying for.

This is what happens when you're taking pictures of windows at night and the shutter release jams so you have to yank the cable out of the camera and the last picture it takes is just a blur.

Bonus mid-week bird blogging

 

I saw this juvenile Cooper's hawk in 2013, but I'm posting it because I didn't manage to get a picture of the adult Cooper's that landed on my fire escape Monday morning.

It only stayed a few seconds -- long enough for my jaw to drop, but not long enough to get even a phone picture. And since it had a small rodent of some kind (probably a rat) clenched in its talons and I was eating, I wasn't that sorry that it didn't stick around for breakfast.

I have been noticing birds I'd never seen before in the backyard, and have been wondering if it's just that I'm spending more time on my bed looking out the window these days, or if they're expanding their usual territory while we humans are in retreat. But I had never seen a hawk outside the park, and definitely not on my fire escape.

Yesterday I saw an email from the Wild Bird Fund reporting that they planned to release a rehabbed Cooper's hawk in the park this past weekend, and I'm guessing that's the bird that turned up here. Maybe she was a little disoriented, or else she just wanted to treat herself to breakfast downtown after getting out of the hospital.

Astronomy Tuesday

Well, this isn't ominous at all.

This image of Phobos, the larger of the two Martian moons, was captured by the Mars Express orbiter in 2010, but it is a perfect representation of how we all feel in 2020. Because of its odd appearance and low orbit, Phobos may be a captured asteroid, and on parts of Mars you can see this particular bad moon rising twice a day.

Image Credit: G. Neukum (FU Berlin) et al., Mars Express, DLR, ESA; Acknowledgement: Peter Masek

Sunday bird blogging

 

Not the best picture I've ever taken of a cardinal, but any cardinal is better than none, I think.

Saturday reflections

 

West 43rd Street on a beautiful afternoon in late fall.

I wanted to say I'll always know this was taken in 2020 because of the man in the face mask but that assumes, of course, that we will ever reach a point where face masks are no longer required. I know we will, but it won't be in 2020, or early 2021.

But it's another beautiful afternoon here, if a little chilly, and I'm choosing optimism. 

Urban poetry

 

A pile of trash awaiting pickup on Tenth Avenue is a symphony of shadow and light and interesting shapes.

Astronomy Tuesday

Who couldn't use some dancing galaxies after the week we've all had? I certainly could.

So here is the Hercules Cluster, also known as Abell 2151.

Image Credit and Copyright: Howard Trottier