Last night’s post was rushed – I was running out of time before my self-imposed “posting deadline” of midnight. So it got cut off abruptly, with the bottom line being that I could see the bright star Capella rising very, very near the horizon in the northeast. That’s rare in SoCal, especially these days, since there’s usually so much haze and coastal clouds scattering the ever present light pollution.
Tonight it was clear again, so I went to take pictures. Again it’s clear, but Capella doesn’t rise until after 22:00, and it doesn’t clear the fence until after 23:00, so this will be rushed as well. (For example, I didn’t have the time to clean up all of the “hot” pixels in Photoshop – please ignore all of those bright red and bright purple specks.)
First of all, here’s a very quickly annotated copy – the (currently) sideways “W” or “M” shape of Cassiopeia up high, near the north pole, which is unmarked but just to the left of it, right around the left edge of the image. And down below, grateful for that hole or notch in the top of the hedge, is Capella.
Here’s the unedited image. Click on it to blow it up and explore.
And there’s one more item annotated in the image, just to the left of the tree, a bit above Cassiopeia – that’s the Andromeda Galaxy.
No kidding!
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 
Gosh, you have hundreds more stars in your sky!
Great catch of Andromeda – best chance I’ve had to see it… stationary, instead of bouncing around in my binoculars. There’s a little line of three dashes heading towards/away from a bit of vine or something coming up from the hedge, to the right of Capella and below Andromeda. I assume that’s a plane or something…
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