Saturday Spectacular

Our weather has been very changeable - below zero temperatures last Tuesday, then warm in the 50s on Saturday. We had rain for much of the day on Saturday, but after it ended, Mother Nature gave us a spectacular show:

Not long after, as the sun went behind the mountains, the sky turned into fire!

Sunrise, November 3 (Rare Eclipse)

I attempted to capture the eclipse on the morning of November 3, but I had no solar filters and the photos I took do not show the actual event. We also had cloud cover.

We went up to Uncle Bill's to take these pictures, as there is a better view of the sunrise from his house. (I was dressed in my nightie, mud boots, and an overcoat. It was chilly!)

They are pretty photos, even if they didn't catch the eclipse.

 

Predawn.

 

Dawn.

 

The sun still hasn't risen.

That's the Peaks of Otter. 

The sun is just coming over the rise; it's that bright orange behind the trees there just to the left of the middle.

 

There's the sun! 

Ol' Helios took his time rising. 

 

And of course he was lifting up straight into the clouds.

 

The eclipse apparently was nearly over when I took these shots around 7 a.m.

 

This one is my favorite.

There may be a bit of the eclipse in this one but it is hard to tell.

Sunset

We had this beautiful sunset Saturday evening after a day of rain. The sky suddenly burst open with color; I understand there was a rainbow behind me that I couldn't see through the trees.

On Sunday we had a bit of excitement here. My husband and I were in Rocky Mount trying to spend some time together and relax. His cell phone rang and it was a neighbor telling us the cows were out.

We raced home in record time and arrived to find two deputy cars here and several neighbors wandering around trying to round up wayward animals. People were excited and waving their arms. A woman I did not know kept talking about seeing a cow wander through her backyard (there are a number of small homes bordering the farm).

My husband, who was a little aggravated and frustrated by this whole scenario, sent me down the road to open one of the big gates, which I did. I then walked across a field and told a neighbor who had corralled a cow that we could get her through that gate, but he wanted me to open a smaller gate at the loading pen so he could try to put her in there. I opened the small gate and stepped back so he could shoo the cow on into the pen.



Older picture of a cow with a newborn.

The cow did not like that and she turned and charged at me. I shrieked and jumped up and tried to scare her to stop her and get out of the way at the same time. Such shenanigans in an old overweight lady are not to be, and my feet went out from under me in the damp grass. I hit the ground hard but since there was a 1,600 pound cow coming at me I climbed back up on my feet immediately, cursing as I did.

The cow swerved and headed for the road. I made a small effort to limp along after her but it was useless and I did not get far.

This animal was not going to be taken easily, and ultimately one of the neighbors on a utility vehicle and a policeman in his vehicle managed to get her through the gate. I certainly wasn't up to chasing after her.

I ended up with a sprained wrist, a big bruise on my lower leg, and another on my hip. It could have been worse, I suppose.

Ultimately we learned that the report was of two cows out, but we only found the one. My husband counted the cows and said they were all in the field. Perhaps one of them found her way back through the fence without help. In any event, he patrolled the fence and patched the hole he thought the cows went through, and that was the end of that.

Sky Watching

Here are some photos of the sky I've taken in the last 10 days, mostly while looking for Comet Pann Starrs.

The hole in the sky.

Is the mothership readying her fall from space?

Red sky in the evening.

Setting sun reflecting on clouds after a snow. Can you find the deer in the photo?

The No Shows

I had hoped this morning I would be posting photos of my beautiful niece, Zoe, dancing at a competition at the Jefferson Center in Roanoke yesterday.

Zoe' dancing at an event last summer.

Alas, I didn't make the event. She was scheduled to dance at 5 p.m. so I arrived an hour early, only to find there was no nearby parking. All of the lots were full, and cars were lined along the streets.

The only place I could find to park was blocks away in an unfamiliar neighborhood that my husband had told me I should avoid. Since I was alone and I was having a terrible time walking any distance because of the arthritis in my feet, I was concerned about parking there.

I called my brother on his cellphone, and he told me, to my consternation, that my niece's dance program had just started! I was missing it. He said it had been moved up a full hour.

I drove around a bit more hoping a space would open, but none did, and I finally gave up. I was disappointed that I did not get to see her perform.

After I arrived home, I looked out at sunset and then later and later, hoping to find Comet Pann Starrs somewhere to the left of the crescent moon. I could not locate it, at least not with my naked eye. What a disappointment that heavenly event has turned out to be, at least from my hilltop.

No comet here. Just an overexposed moon and some stars.

Caught the Comet, Sort of

Last night (Tuesday 3/12/2013) we went comet watching again.

We didn't think we saw it.

But when I downloaded my photos, and blew them up, I found it!

It is in the middle of the red circle below. Hopefully you can see it if you click on the photo to make it bigger.

I will keep looking and trying to obtain a better photo of it. This might be as good as it gets, though.

Comet Watching

Saturday was not the night to watch for comet Pann-Starrs: that was Sunday night, and we had clouds. But I took the camera out Saturday to take photos and get a kind of baseline of the sky.

The sky was lined with trails from airplanes.

This is not a comet. It's an aircraft. I think.

If you look along the mountain ridge top, you can see the trail of an airplane glowing in the light of the setting sun.

I have not yet seen the comet, but it certainly was a pretty sky. I will look again on the next clear night.

Sunset - December 9

These Dreams

To dream is to believe in something other than the bleakness of reality.

To dream is to see the blue skies behind the clouds, the rainbow that follows a storm.

To dream is to embrace change and hold it with both hands, grasping it to your breast in an embrace so tight you nearly squeeze the life out of it.

To dream is to look too tomorrow, to know it will be coming, and to harbor great hopes that it will come rolling toward you like a truck full of ice cream.

To dream is to put forth ideas, to be brave even without true danger, to feel in spite of the risk. 

Dreams are the stuff of legend, the tigers in need of taming. To dream is to save the day.

The Persiods

The Persoids is an annual meteor shower that occurs in early to mid-August. The meteors are caused by a stream of debris left over from the tail of Comet Swift-Tuttle.

You can see it in the northern sky where I live.

I decided I wanted to try to catch a meteor on film. I decided to use my Nikon Coolpix P500, which does not have the best manual settings, but does have some. It is a point-and-shoot with a zoom lens, but it is not a DSLR.

We had a bit of cloud cover. I shot this at dusk, using the "dust/dawn" setting on the camera. I also used a tripod AND used the self-timer on the camera in order to avoid shaking anything.

The streak in this picture is an air craft, not a meteor.

However, the little tiny streak in this picture is, I think, a meteor, though I won't swear to it. It only showed up in this one shot, though, whatever it is. I suppose it could be a plane or a satellite.

Here it is again with a line drawn around it so you can see it better.

All in all, considering the camera I was using really isn't made for taking pictures like this, I was pleased with these results. At least the stars are in the sky and I did catch *something* on film. I took well over 150 shots just to catch this little blip.

I had better results using the dusk/dawn setting on the camera than I did using the manual setting and fiddling with the menus. Something to note if you want to try this yourself sometime with a point-and-shoot digital. The scene settings do make a difference.

Pink Sky At Night

Last night, we had a pink sunset.

Jet plumes streaked across the sky.

 The half-moon was a little bitty dot in the midst of swirling pink clouds.

I thought I might reach out and grab it!