Astronomy Tuesday -- okay, really Wednesday

My mind has been on other things than blogging recently, sorry. Tuesday slipped away like water through my fingers and I completely forgot to post this picture.

This is Enceladus, one of the lesser moons of Saturn, photographed by Cassini. Those plumes are geysers of water and ice lit from behind by the sun. Scientists are fascinated by these plumes, and think that there may actually be liquid water, maybe even a subsurface ocean, on this moon, in a neighborhood where everything else is frozen solid.

I'm more interested in the wrinkly textures of the surface, which look like a scuffed and scarred piece of old wood.

Image Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA

Sunday bird blogging

A black and white warbler, pretending it's a nuthatch.

I'm leaving for Seattle next weekend, followed by ten days in Alaska. I have a few days each in Fairbanks and Anchorage, and a NatGeo tour mostly in and around Denali National Park, and I'm a little worried about getting around, as I'm still hobbling from the damn fracture in my foot. Because Alaska's such a sprawl, a lot of the time will be spent on buses and trains and boats just looking at scenery, but there will be some hiking. (My foot started throbbing, on cue, as soon as I typed that word.)

My priority today is to get rid of a few of the boxes and get my apartment organized enough that I will not burst into tears when I walk in after two weeks away.

Saturday reflections

This is 333 West Wacker in Chicago, one of the few big buildings there known by an address rather than a name.

It's a curvy green mirror on the banks of the river, reflecting the buildings on the opposite bank, and acres and acres of sky.

Urban poetry

Headbands at the flea market.

Sunday bird blogging

Late today.

Here's a woodpecker enjoying the sunshine. I spent the day sorting through boxes and piles and making no discernible progress in my goal of winnowing myself down to approximately half the junk currently in my apartment. This is not going to happen overnight.

Saturday reflections

I loved the random shapes inside this window (taken from a streetcar in Portland last month) and the green reflections of the trees outside.

Urban poetry

I love this: a new art installation that was being assembled in Millennium Park in Chicago when I was there in June.

Astronomy Tuesday

Another look at the Crab Nebula. This much more detailed image was taken by the Hubble.

This nebula has the distinction of being M1, meaning it is the first object in the catalog compiled by French astronomer Charles Messier in the 18th century. Although the 110 objects identified in the catalog are still referred to by their Messier numbers, they were catalogued not because of what they were, but rather what they weren't: comets.

Comets were Messier's passion, and he originally thought this nebula was actually Halley's comet, which was due for its periodic visitation. After noticing that the "comet" didn't seem to be going anywhere, he realized that a catalog of all the vague cloudy objects in the sky that could be mistaken for  comets would be useful for comet hunters like himself so they wouldn't waste time observing them. The catalog contains nebulae like this, but also galaxies and star clusters -- the Andromeda galaxy, the nearest spiral galaxy to our own, which is frequently bright enough to be seen with the naked eye, is commonly referred to as M31.

Messier did manage to find comets, by the way: thirteen of them.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Hester, A. Loll (ASU); Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin (Skyfactory)

Bonus reflections

Interesting reflections on West 57th Street, across from the studio.

A better picture, but lacking the detail I like to capture in building shots.

Last Week Tonight

I admit, I have learned to like my iPhone.

I like that I can dictate texts instead of typing them on that awful virtual keyboard (so a plus for voice recognition, a minus for awful keyboard.) I like the way my bookmarks from my laptop sync automatically. I like the way I was able to tell Siri, "restaurant called Bijou SW Third in Portland" and she came right back with the address and didn't add, "You're standing across the street from it, moron."

But so far I do not love the camera. Half the time I switch it to video without intending to, and the quality of the pictures is disappointing for anything except portraits.

This picture, for example, which I took standing in line for a taping of John Oliver's HBO show last night. The lack of details reminded me of my first digital camera and those whopping 640K images I thought were so amazing, and I ended up flattening and blurring the image just to make it look intentional.

John Oliver is, as expected, very funny and extremely charming in that uniquely English way that makes vague dorkishness adorable instead of annoying. During the Q&A before the taping, he was asked questions like, "Is there any story you didn't get to cover that you wished you could have?" and "Who was the best guest you had?" and he pointed out that this was only his 13th episode and he'd only had two guests so far, and since they only cover one big story per show, yes, there were many stories they hadn't been able to cover. One man asked him, "Kiss, marry, kill -- Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher" and he said, "This is HBO. You can say 'fuck,'" and immediately took a question from the other side of the room.

Just as the lights went down for the actual taping he said, "Fuck -- Jon Stewart. Marry -- Jon Stewart. Kill -- also Jon Stewart, so we could die at the same moment." After a pause, he added, "I think that's the creepiest thing I've ever said." And then he jumped right into the show.

Sunday bird blogging

This stocky little fellow with the skeptical eye is a song sparrow. I took this picture sometime in the spring and never got around to posting it.

Geometries

Stone steps at the Japanese Garden in Portland.

The serenity and sense of order are more than usually appealing to me this morning. I woke bleary-eyed and coughing from what's either an oncoming cold, or my sinuses misbehaving more than usual, to rain pouring down outside my window.

And an apartment that was already bursting at the seams now holds eight more cartons of stuff, plus framed photographs and a painting I bought in Beijing many years ago.

I'm downsizing from an office to a cubicle at work, the first step in extricating myself from this job. My request to move to a four-day workweek was turned down, but I'm working on a new strategy. If that doesn't work, there's always Plan B. Plan C. Plan D.

Some people would see a rainy Saturday as an opportunity to go through the cartons and figure out what I'm keeping, what goes to charity, what goes to storage. My first impulse is to go back to bed with coffee, emerging only when the mug is empty or the coffee is cold.