As I was getting home from the ALS Network LA Walk & Ride To Cure ALS on Sunday evening, it got pretty.
The GOP misinformation machine would have you believe that SoCal is a cesspool of vice, trash, grafitti, and crime.
Obviously. Why would they lie about something like that?
Filed under ALS Network, Christmas Lights, Critters, Los Angeles, Photography, Politics, Sunsets
Not one of the more spectacular sunsets we’ve seen, but after several days of just being cloudy & gloomy, it was nice to have a least a little bit of color.
There weren’t a lot of clouds to serve as a canvas for the color, but there were some thin clouds that were doing their best. One of those days when you take the best that’s available and try to be grateful for it.
Filed under Critters, Photography, Sunsets
Stuck in traffic
It was so beautiful for about two minutes. And then we moved on.
Filed under Photography, Sunsets
I just hate it when the Ventura County Gateway to Hell opens up, especially when the wind is blowing from the west.
The smell of sulphur and brimstone can be horrible!
It was, however, a very cool looking effect for about two minutes at sunset. Timing, as always, is everything in life.
Filed under Photography, Sunsets, Weather
All week they’ve been promising our first rain of the season for tomorrow – they lied. Or, at a minimum, they’ve reneged. Apparently the remnants of a tropical storm that fell apart off of Hawaii got sucked into the jet stream and sent our way, but it’s going to go more north.
We still get some nice, high, wispy clouds to ogle, but the chance of any actual raindrops is quickly approaching zero.
Of course, those nice, high, wispy clouds turn pink at sunset, so that’s nice also.
Enjoy the weekend! Don’t forget to take a moment to ogle the clouds!
Filed under Photography, Sunsets, Weather
Probably not. But it sure looks like it wants to.
There’s more going on than just the coastal low clouds and fog moving in. Through some of the gaps in the clouds it looked like some significant cloud building and cumulus clouds rising up in the afternoon heat. But no rain.
Driving home I could see virga falling from the cloud bases in a couple spots, but nothing was hitting the ground.
Our last measurable rain was in April, which is normal, and the forecast says there’s a 50%+ chance of a third of an inch or so on Saturday. That would be nice.
But I’m not going to hold my breath waiting. We’re not to the rainy season around here yet.
Can’t wait!
Filed under Photography, Sunsets, Weather
…and the Sun disappears below the horizon over THAT way.
Or it might be more accurate to say that the western horizon is rising up and obscuring our view of the Sun. The pretty pink clouds are gravy.
Six billion years of angular momentum just being conserved. We’re just along for the ride.
Enjoy the trip!
Filed under Photography, Sunsets
After two nights of clouds and fog (and the constant heat waves of the summer are long gone, it’s getting chilly out there at night!), tonight was mostly clear, so it was back to the comet hunt.
I could see it with binoculars from my front porch, but took the cameras down the hill for a good view of the western horizon.
It’s up there, just to the left of that wire, and you can see that it’s dimmer than it was just three days ago.
It’s also gotten much higher. So now it can be full dark (or at least, as dark as an urban site like Los Angeles can be) with the comet still fairly high and away from any clouds or lingering sunlight immediately after sunset.
As for those wide bands of light in this image and the “X-shaped” light beams below? Internal reflections in the iPhone lens from the ton of lights in my neighbor’s yard. Why does he have to have it lit up like that every single night? There’s nothing going on there, no parties or anything in that back yard…
With the haze and light pollution and the one-day-after-full-supermoon rising behind us, it’s tough to get a lot of definition in the tail, but you can see it there. I may have to play with Photoshop to see if I can tease out more details.
All of these pictures were taken with the iPhone 13 on a tripod, which was necessary as the wind was kicking up again.
Not the same picture twice, but close.
I was trying to increase the exposure time on the iPhone to get it to overexpose the neighbors’ houses and landscape instead of underexposing the comet. Marginal results, at best.
I shot a lot of images with the DSLR and the zoom lens, but with it zoomed in I couldn’t tell if I was pointed at the comet or at some empty piece of sky near the comet. 96 pictures and just one of them scored. I need to work on that.
If you have a clear sky this weekend, take your shot and go looking for the comet about an hour after sunset. It will be above the western horizon, to the right and above the very bright planet Venus. It will help a lot if you can get away from city lights and out to someplace with a dark sky. Binoculars will help a LOT. Happy hunting!
Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Sunsets
With the hazy skies we’re having it’s a little tougher to see the comet with the naked eye, but it’s still there once you know where to look.
Finding it with a camera or binoculars however is a piece of cake starting about an hour after sundown.
These first two pictures are from my tripod-mounted iPhone 13.
Bringing out the big guns, the view from my Canon Rebel Xt with the 70mm zoom lens is amazing.
If I went out to a dark sky location the tail would be much more pronounced against a black sky, instead of being washed out by the low-contrast haze and light pollution of the LA metro area. (That red horizontal line is a jet headed toward LAX.)
(Yet another jet just before the comet set.) One thing I worked on tonight was getting the focus done correctly with the big lens, and I think that I did a lot better.
Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Sunsets
Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, first visible to me above the western horizon at sunset yesterday, was visible again tonight with another night of clear-ish skies. There was a bit of haze (outright fog this morning) which didn’t clear until after noon, with enough hanging around so that I didn’t see the comet tonight until about 15 minutes after I did last night. But it was also higher above the horizon than last night, so it was a fair trade off.
Low-resolution screen capture from the video below. The comet starts to appear out of the twilight & haze on the right-hand side, then I shifted the camera once I could see where the comet actually was.
The little white things zipping by are jet aircraft heading down the coast off of Ventura toward LAX.
Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Sunsets, Video
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