Coyote Crossing!

It’s all here on my Hummingbird Feeder Cam site.  Coyotes crossing the empty lot below the apartment in broad daylight! Meanwhile, a hummingbird flies up for some breakfast.

What up Holmes?

Comet Holmes! That’s what’s up! I finally decided to take a look. Especially after I read it had grown bigger than the Sun! Amazing! I guess a week or two ago, it was visible with the naked eye, even from the city. However, I couldn’t make it out just by looking. But with my cheap binoculars, there it was! It looks like a ghost almost. Just a cotton ball, but much much less dense. Almost a mist of a snowball. Weird, but cool! There’s still plenty of time to check it out! Here’s a great article at Astronomy.com that will help you know where to look. Not only that, but I found an AWESOME and FREE program for your computer that will help you navigate the night time sky. It’s called Stellarium. It’s an Open Source Planetarium program for PCs! I downloaded it this afternoon and it’s unbelievably cool. You can search the entire evening sky from where you live or check out how the sky looks from anywhere on the planet. You can view constellations, even superimpose constellation art to see them even clearer.  Find planets, nebulae, etc. etc. etc. I’m amazed at how versatile it is and even how fast the program runs!

OK, so, Holmes isn’t the only show in the sky tonight. It’s also the peak of the Leonid Meteor Shower.  Called that because they seem to emanate from Leo.  Leo is just rising now (almost midnight here now). I know that because of my new Planetarium program :-) Anyway, I just went out to see what I could see. The Leonid’s are expected to be moderate this year. About 15 “shooting stars” per hour at their peak tonight. I made a short drive up the road to the Linda Vista Trail Trailhead. It’s where I do most of my hiking. You aren’t supposed to park there after 9:00, but since I was staying next to the car in my lawn chair I thought it would probably be fine.

It was a bit darker there than here at the apartment. I could see Holmes a little sharper. So cool! I waited quite awhile and only saw two “shooting stars.” While I was hanging out, I heard some coyotes yapping in the distance. Probably closer than a mile and it sounded like they were moving closer, but then they quieted down, so who knows. Orion was hanging over Pusch Peak which was illuminated by a First Quarter Moon that hadn’t yet set. Very pretty indeed! Mars was right in front of me as I faced east. It was just pretty out there! I spent some time talking to God about how beautiful His creation is, and some other things that are on my mind :-) I finally got tired of sitting around. So, I took out my binoculars again and looked at Homes, Mars, some of the stars in Orion, the Pleades, and others, and then came back here to go to bed :-)

Good Night!