Part-time prevaricator
Sometimes it’s hard to see the beauty in winter, which is why I like taking photos of things like hoar on trees and frost on windowpanes (like the photo above).
Otherwise, it’s too easy to feel like this—
—when the temperature dips to -30°C in the mornings.
In my banned books mug.
As it heats up, the black REDACTION bars fade, revealing the titles of books that have been banned and challenged through the years.
It may be -35°C outside but at least the sky is a lovely shade of blue.
Things I didn’t expect to see in Victoria Avenue the morning after a heavy snowfall the week before Xmas: this guy.
A fascinating article on the Planetary Society website: Whose Stars? Our heritage of Arabian astronomy:
Greco-Mesopotamian constellation figures bear Latin names. Their brightest stars are designated with letters of the Greek alphabet, yet most of them bear proper names that derive from Arabic. Even so, many of these star names are Arabic descriptions of Greek constellation figures, not Arabian ones.
Learn more about the Arabian star and constellation names, like, for instance, ath-Thuraya (aka the Pleiades) and her Hands (one amputated, one henna-dyed), Aldebaran (the Follower), al-Jawza’ and the Shi’ra sisters, and more.
It’s fascinating, and at least part of the reason I’m posting this is to bookmark the article for later re-reading. I think it might be a useful thing for a science-fiction writer to know about.
Header image: Pleiades (or I guess ath-Thuraya), taken by me in 2015.
In the photo above, I caught what I think was a C-130 Hercules turning. I think the military might have been doing some flight training.
I caught a few meteors on camera tonight. It was mild in town, but the wind out in the country made it very cold.
I think I might have seen more meteors than I photographed, actually. They were all over the sky. And even the brightest two, in the photos below, barely show up.
I guess I’ve got some more learning to do about shooting meteor showers.
You go up, you go down.
I saw this stairway on Twitter, and thought it looked, well, amazing. It made me nostalgic for the stairs in my childhood home, to wit:
Dad made the risers. They’re varnished wood, crazy slippery in sock feet, shaped like the end of a canoe paddle. The central column, if I recall correctly, was welded by a close family friend, Gilles.
Man, I loved those stairs. They were the best.
When I left the house last night, it was mostly clear. I stopped and got a coffee, and by the time I made it to my destination— a gravel road a couple miles north of the Rapid City turn-off—the half-moon was still bright, but a thin haze of cloud had started to move in.
Continue reading “Star trails, through the haze”
On my walk to work this afternoon, I was struck by how much receding ice on concrete resembles a topographic map of an archipelago.
Sidewalk at the WMCA.