Paparazzi

Yesterday I pulled an all-dayer and planned to get to bed early, but then my badly sprained biological rhythms kicked in. I napped, briefly, while surfing the internet, but then found myself wide awake - more or less - all the way to 3:00 in the morning, about thirty-six hours after I had last slept. I then slept to nearly 1:00 this afternoon - so when I woke up I had to rouse myself in a hurry to make my 3:00 blood donation. (Made it at 3:30. They're willing to wait for my blood.)

After getting leaked I decided to check the oil in my car, which is a good thing, since it means I get to keep driving it. I won't be getting an oil change tomorrow because about a quart and a half of what's in there right now is fresh oil. Next days off for sure.

Stopped at a local candy store to get some stuff my mom likes, then went up to see my comic book guy. Business was good - there was quite a crowd of people there when I got there, and several more came in while we hung out and talked about his recent newspaper profile. Granted, it was in the "Good Times for Seniors" supplement, but you know what they say about publicity.

On the way back I started taking photos - and I didn't stop until well after dark. Nearly seventy photos, some of which will get their own blog posts. Here's a sampling:

The Eighth Street Bridge in Wyoming, PA, looking south to the Bear Creek Wind Farm seven miles away. This is basically a do-over of the photo on this post. It was an absolutely gorgeous day - note the family out on bicycles on the walkway ahead of me.

The Susquehanna was flowing fiercely around the pilings of both the current bridge and the replacement being built next to it. Here is one of the wakes being created.

Sunlight on choppy waters. The Susquehanna and Monocanock Island.

Vertical contrails. When I was younger and the world was under constant threat of total annihilation from an exchange of nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles, this sort of sight would have been terrifying. The verticality here is an illusion - these are three planes flying horizontally but all almost exactly toward a point directly overhead.

One of the planes on a collision course with the girders at the top of the Eighth Street Bridge.

The Huber Breaker in Ashley, PA. Slated for eventual demolition, unless someone is willing to put up big money to preserve it.

The Moon trapped in a geometric web. Venus is also visible in this picture, just to the left of the chimney on the left.

The Moon again. Note the Earthshine which makes the dark parts visible. Close inspection will reveal two stars just to the left of the Moon. I couldn't see these with my naked eye or with binoculars, but they show up in every photo of the Moon that I took - and appear to shift position as the Moon barrels across the sky. - well, no. In two consecutive photos taken at the same zoom level, one in "landscape" and one in "portrait" mode, the "stars" maintain the same position on the screen - but move with respect to the Moon. Yet in photos taken in the same orientation but at different zoom levels, the "stars" maintain the same relative position to the Moon but the distance between them changes - as though they are also being "zoomed". So clearly they're system artifacts, but artifacts that show up differently based on the zoom level. And they don't appear in photos taken later in the night!

Orion from my mom's back yard, with contrast blown up (to a setting of 88 on Adobe PhotoDeluxe) to improve visibility. I wanted to get the trail of the plane flying into Orion's groinular area during the multiple seconds that the shutter was open. The effect makes it look like Orion is quite happy to see somebody.

Auriga from my mom's back yard, again with the contrast increased. This approximates what I could see bare-eyed. I think visibility was even better than it was during my astrophotography outing last week.