Saturday reflections

Wintry colors here, which feel appropriate on a day when the air is rushing around enthusiastically, shoving the trees outside my window back and forth and sharpening the bitter cold temperatures.

It was 12 degrees when I got up, and eventually I had to give up on the idea that I wasn't going to go outside until it hit a minimum of 20, since that may not happen until April.

Urban poetry

Some big office buildings try to keep their tenants from clustering around the building entrances when they go outside for a smoke. So you see a lot of signs like this.

Being, for the most part, ignored.

Astronomy Tuesday

The Orion nebula can allegedly be seen with the naked eye. Maybe, with better eyes than I have.

The best view I ever got was in the bush of Zambia, hundreds of miles from the nearest city, and even through strong binoculars it was just a white smudge. This magnificent mosaic, taken in different bands of infrared light by the orbiting WISE observatory, is something else entirely.

Image Credit: WISE, IRSA, NASA; Processing and Copyright : Francesco Antonucci

Snow day

Skater's waltz

It's been coming down all day, but the furrow-browed, deeply concerned TV reporters reminding us every ten minutes to STAY INSIDE (while standing for no particular reason on various street corners and highway overpasses being snowed on) insist that the big blizzard hasn't actually started yet, and we won't be getting the real snow until later tonight, when the entire Eastern Seaboard will turn into the ice planet Hoth (tauntauns sold separately.)

In the meantime, here are a few more pictures from Friday, since it was apparently the last sunny day we'll have until well into February. There are always a few showoffs spinning and jumping at the Rockefeller Center ice rink, but I love to watch the novices, clinging desperately to the railings or their friends, and how delighted they look when they start to get the hang of it.

Sunday bird blogging

It may have been warmer than usual Friday, but it was still not exactly swimming weather.

But here's a pair of pigeons demonstrating that they are perhaps second only to cockroaches on the indestructibility scale. Brrr!

Sun dance

Here's another relief, part of the two sets on opposite sides of 30 Rock called, for some not very obvious reason, Radio and Television.

It was unexpectedly sunny Friday, and a relatively toasty 35 degrees, so these dancers seemed less interested in acting out cryptic metaphors about modern communications than in just soaking up some rays while they can.

Saturday reflections

The NBC building in Rockefeller Center.

There were originally a lot more windows in this picture, but I ended up cropping it down to get a better look at the Art Deco bas relief. There are many similar reliefs around Rockefeller Plaza, some allegorical, some less so. Like this one, which seems to suggest that not only was television widely known in the Classical world, but that ancient Greek cameramen did their jobs naked.

Urban poetry

I understand that I'm not their target audience, but I still think this storefront on West 50th Street is not the most promising spa I've ever seen.

Astronomy Tuesday

Happy birthday, Hubble!

In honor of its 25th anniversary (and upgraded optics) the Hubble team captured a larger, higher resolution version of one of its most famous subjects: the Pillars of Creation, in the Eagle Nebula (M16, for those who wonder whether our friend Monsieur Messier took note). While these columns are only a small section of the nebula, they are almost unfathomably huge. The leftmost pillar is about four light years tall, and those little fingers of gas poking out at the tops are each larger than our solar system.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI / AURA)

Sunday bird blogging

It's hard to resist a nice grackle.

They're actually quite annoying birds, loud and aggressive, but lovely to look at.

Saturday reflections

I love this taillight shot, with the red wall behind the car, and the black and red reflections in the car window.

It's almost a little too posed. Except that it wasn't.