At night

This was the view two or three hours ago, just after the sun set, while the New Moon was still visible above the horizon. And not far from Luna was Jupiter, staring. This was the view from our back door through the trees, now almost denuded of leaves.

Just after sunset, a half-hour ago, there was the moon over our neighbours' house.

Not only Jupiter, I've learned, is visible these days immediately after sunset, but so too are its moons. This picture was a little while after sunset today when the sky was still quite bright. The uncropt picture I took with my 150mm lens, is inset with an enlarged and sharpened piece showing Jupiter and its two visible moons. I hate to use anything that weighs me down and. although I was only two steps outside my kitchen door, I didn't want to bother with the tripod. So this was hand-held, literally, though my right arm *was* steadied against against the deck rail. :)

I was up early this morning and saw this outside the kitchen window.

The chair has been in my wife's family for at least sixty years. It's belonged to a chain of her relatives in that time, for the past twenty years to us. The Christmas tree awaits being brought in from outside the front door. The two boxes in the foreground have a tree stand and electric lights. Soon we should be festivised.

We've had, in our neighbourhood, some ups and downs of excitement during the past two years. Lately it is mostly pretty quiet. But all evening last night it was bang bang bang with fireworks. And just at midnight it became especially loud. A neighbour three or four doors up had a full array of them. This is what I could see from the kitchen door a few minutes after midnight.

We walked down to the bottom of our street just before supper and could see the nearly-full Moon had not long before come over the hill. This was three hours before the fullness of the Full Moon, but it was 100% illuminated.

The view out our dining-room window as a light snow falls tonight, looking over our neighbour's waggon-wheel and greenhouse, down to the further neighbours and the street below us.

The still nearly full but waning moon tonight, over the mail-boxes at the bottom of our street.

Just before supper, this was the view outside my front door.

The moon outside my kitchen door just after supper, an hour or so ago. Four days old and partly obscured by a cold haze.

I was cooking supper and running outside every few minutes in order to catch the Moon as it cleared the hill a kilometre to the East of us. I was lucky to catch it just starting to cross the tree line and I took a dozen pictures. But this one, taken five or ten minutes later with it having cleared the distant trees, is my favourite.

Today was the northern spring equinox, so tonight is the first night of spring. But we got 8 cm of snow since suppertime. So we lit the tree on the back deck.

We had a "snow warning" from the weather office this afternoon preparing us for fifteen cm of snow in a rapid fall. But we got only about eight cm, and a lot of that melted before it started to stick. So it's a pleasant evening outside now.

This was last night when there was only a light fog above us and the moon was still glaring down through it to our back door. She's getting closer to being full but was still only 94% when I took the picture. The dark area was the lower left, that non-circularity making her look a little slewed, perhaps a little drunk. I didn't focus on the moon. I liked the poplar catkins better.

I would probably have slept right through the lunar eclipse early this morning except that my wife knew I wanted to see it. So she got me to come out on the back deck to look. This is what we saw. We were looking through the big trees that overhang our yard. Luckily they have not leafed out yet. And I was lucky enough in this picture to even get a few stars nearby.

I don't like posting two pictures of the same thing. But I like this one as much as the other, so here it is. This was at about 1:15 am NDT this morning, not long after the moon had entered the "total" phase of the eclipse. At 1/5 second, the stars here are little dashed lines. Oh well.

We were out for a short walk up the street and came back via the steps by the church up there. I put the camera on a hand-rail on the steps and aimed it down the street towards our neighbourhood.