Really not a face you want to see coming towards you

Even if it's on the other side of some thick glass. This magnificent jaguar was at the La Paz Waterfall Gardens, and it really was more than a little unnerving when it turned and started walking in my direction.

I have rather a similar feeling at the moment as the new semester gets underway. I won't actually be in a classroom for a couple of weeks yet, but the thinking and planning is a little overwhelming. Like something with claws and big teeth has just noticed me standing there...

Astronomy Tuesday

This new image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows an even stranger than usual phenomenon.

WR140 is a Wolf-Rayet star, a massive star near the end of its life that is throwing off most of its mass into space. The rays that you see shooting out from the star are just caused by the camera lenses diffracting the starlight, but those wavy rings around the star are not an illusion. WR140 is part of a binary star system, and it's the gravitational interaction with its partner that's creating the strange symmetrical shells from the gas it's shedding. Like the rings in a tree, a new ring is created every time the two stars in the system circle each other, approximately once every eight years.

Image copywright: JWST/MIRI/Judy Schmidt

Tree in the gardens

I don't know what these viny things are—they were hanging off one of the trees in the garden—but I love the way they look against the window.

More Santiago Apóstol

Two looks at the exterior.

Santiago Apóstol

Inside the church walls are these beautiful gardens. They're supposedly haunted by the headless ghost of the murderous priest, but honestly, if they didn't want the priest hanging around forever they should have made the place less appealing.

Downtown Cartago

This is the view from the ruins of Santiago Apóstol in central Cartago.

There have been a series of churches on this site since the sixteenth century, most of them destroyed by earthquakes. The guidebooks point out that the church that's there now isn't technically a ruin because it was never finished. It was to have been the only Romanesque style church in Costa Rica, but after yet another earthquake in 1910 it was abandoned.

There is a legend that two brothers, one a priest, fell in love with the same woman. The priest killed his brother with a knife during Mass, and though he vowed to build a church to atone for his sin, the church was destroyed by an earthquake a year later, as was every subsequent church on the site, which is taken as proof that it is cursed.

Cartago

Cartago is about an hour southeast of San José. It became the first capital of Costa Rica in 1563, but extensive volcano damage in 1732 led to its being gradually overshadowed, and then replaced, by San José.

It's most famous for La Negrita, the Black Madonna shrine at the basilica. Unfortunately our visit coincided with the annual pilgrimage to the shrine so we couldn't visit the basilica, and though we saw the crowds of pilgrims, some of whom had been walking for days, I couldn't really get any good pictures from the bus.

My idea of a pilgrimage is obviously a couple of centuries out of date, because these pilgrims, with their sneakers and athletic wear and backpacks, looked like any group on an organized long walk. One thing I'd never seen before: there were the usual tables handing out water and snacks to the pilgrims as they passed by, but instead of bottles, the water was in plastic bags knotted at the top. I half-expected to see goldfish.

I don't know if this gentleman was a visitor or lived in Cartago. He was sitting by himself on the main street, watching the crowds go by.

Sunday bird blogging

Usually I only include birds I see in the wild in Sunday Bird Blogging. But these macaws—a scarlet and a green—at the La Paz Waterfall Gardens were so adorable I'm making an exception.

Saturday reflections

I love the way the bottom two sections of the sign reflect the neighborhood, as a noirish constrast to the bright colors for the party store.

I took this from the bus on our way out of San José on one of our excursions.

Urban poetry

Classes for my final semester started tonight. Here's a reasonable approximation of my neural wiring at the moment.

Winged insect break

I'm in the mood for something simple and beautiful tonight, so I wanted to post a picture of one of the many butterflies I saw in Costa Rica. I'm pretty sure that this guy, in my garden in San José, is actually a moth rather than a butterfly, but it will do.

I love that fuzzy blue body. It looks as though it hasn't quite given up on being a caterpillar.

Mas Mercado Central

The market is labyrinthine, and despite these pictures, was very crowded when we were there, so I was ready to leave about ten minutes after I got there.