Aurora

On the return flight from the World Fantasy Convention in Montreal, the pilot announced that for those sitting on the right hand side of the plane, that there was a light show going on. It was the Aurora Borealis. Now, for some of you, that is an ordinary event, but living down in Texas, it was extremely rare for me. I struggled with the tiny airplane window and my Olympus C2000 digital camera. The image is poor, but it was the best I could do under the circumstances. The bright point light is the navigation light at the tip of the wing. The red streaks below were the towns and and farm lights below. The aurora is that band of light on the northern skyline. This was a 16 second exposure ( hand held) with some digital clean up in Photoshop.

Lunar Occultation of Saturn

I watched the Lunar Occultation of Saturn tonight. I like the sound the words make.




It is things like this that let you realize deep down inside that the science books aren't lying to you. Saturn really is farther away from me that the Moon -- I can see it for myself. Plus, it is pretty. This photo does not do the scene justice. Hand holding a camera up to the telescope has it penalties.

Layoffs

For my friends at Motorola, a little hope for good luck at this time.

Anti-Sunset

On the way home from work, I noticed an anti-sunset starting to form. An antisunset is a subtle, but beautiful array of dark rays centering on the spot exactly opposite the sun. At sunset, when the atmosphere and the clouds are perfect, the sunset's dark brother can be seen in the east. It has proved hard to photograph, and even in this case, I have had to enhance the sky digitally to make it visible to other people.