Saving the Washout House

You will all remember a couple of posts I have done about this home that had its foundation nearly washed out during an incredible rainstorm we had back in September of 2021 After the Washout.  Then I did another few posts when they started rebuilding the cliff behind the house to save the house.  Starting the Repair In July of 2022 I showed how much progress had been made. Repair Progress.  Well, when I was at the beach for the icicles, I saw how much has been done!  So I took some photographs from the ground and was going to post one or two.  Until today!  Stan came out for some more drone practice at the ballfield in town and when he was done, I thought we should come down here and see what an aerial photograph of the repair work would look like!  I am blown away!  Look how much better this photograph I did with Stan's new drone, shows how far the repair process has come, and what an astounding amount of work is involved in restoring the hill and saving the house!  This is an extra large image so please click on it to see more details.

 

Sketching the Comet

I told you that I was unsuccessful in trying to photograph the comet last Wednesday.  But even though it was cold, I spent a fair amount of time just looking at the comet in the eyepiece, studying it carefully.  I have been learning how to "see" when observing astronomical objects, for years.  It is a skill that you develop over time.  You really get to carefully see an object when you make a pencil sketch of it.  I don't do a lot of sketching, but each time I do, I get better at it.  You get better at it by asking questions about it.  How bright is it, what shape is it, is it the same brightness all over, or is there there a bright center, and so on analyzing what you are looking at.  So I didn't draw the comet that night because it was so cold and windy.  I did the drawing from memory a couple of days ago.  I did the drawing on the left with an ordinary No. 2 pencil on drawing paper.  I also used something called a "blending tortillion."  It is a thing that looks like a short pencil, made from tightly wrapped heavy paper.  You use it so smear parts of the pencil drawing, to get really delicate tones. So the original drawing is on the left.  I photographed that drawing and then in Photoshop, "inverted" the tones, so that's what you see on the right, which more closely resembles what I saw in the eyepiece.  So now you have a sense of what this comet, named C2022 E3 ZTF, looks like.

 

A Ring Around the Moon!

There was a note and a photograph on the astronomy club mailing list that one of the members posted  showing a ring around the moon.  So I grabbed my camera and went outside, and there was the ring!  Other members said it was cloudy and they couldn't see it.  This ring is called a 22 degree halo.  It is an atmospheric optical phenomenon that forms as sunlight or moonlight is refracted by millions of hexagonal ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere as clouds.  Halos appear when the sky is covered by thin cirrus, or cirrostratus clouds that often come a few days before a large storm front. That was pretty technical, for something so beautiful and poetic as this.

 

A Sky Full of Clouds

So you remember my photographs of the ice on the railings on the Sea Cliff Boardwalk?  Well, it was much colder last night and the wind was stronger.  So I drove back there after lunch wondering what I would find, expecting a lot more ice.  I was stunned!  Not one speck of ice on any of the railings!  I have absolutely no idea what happened.  It was well below freezing and there were hight winds all night, so I expected to see more ice, but certainly not no ice!  A mystery.  But my trip was not wasted.  I saw this magnificent scene from 40 feet away from where I shot yesterday's photographs.  Wow...  Definitely worth the trip.

 

Temperature 22 degrees, Winds 32 MPH Gusting to 42 MPH!

It was FREEZING today and the wind was howling!  I went to the store for some things, and on the way home decided to drive by Sea Cliff Beach, which faces north toward Long Island Sound.  So the wind was howling from the northwest, and blowing waves toward the beach.  Well, it was so cold last night and today that apparently the salt spray was blown up onto this railing along the boardwalk and today the railing was covered with icicles for about 30 feet, and the benches and boardwalk were also iced over!

It made for a spectacular scene!  I have never seen anything quite like this!

The first photograph I took was this view out over Long Island Sound toward New Rochelle, NY  When I got out of my car with my camera, I couldn't find any gloves, and I could only stay photographing for less than a minute before my hands were too cold.  For the ice on the railings photographs, I had found gloves so I could spend more time composing photographs.

This is a different part of the railing.  I shoot a lot of things and then end up rejecting some photographs.  This looks interesting at first but it is not as beautiful as the images where I am looking up at the blue sky.

 

That Sam, He's So Funny

Kathy bought a new wok.  It is smaller and has a handle on it.  It was all shiny metal and the instructions explain how to season it by coating the inside of the wok with an oil like canola oil, and then heating the wok on the stove until the oil smokes.  Then you let it cool down and do the same thing again.  When she was done, I thought I would take a photograph of the colors in the seasoned wok.  So I put it on the floor to photograph it, and in the middle of that, who sticks his head into the picture but Sammy the cat!  He sniffed around for a while, and I cannot imagine why.  A cat who likes burned canola oil?  One more mystery in the life of cats!

 

Do You See a Comet?

First thing, please click on this photograph to enlarge it.  It is a photograph of part of the night sky and you will see numerous stars when you enlarge the photo.  Now, look and see if you can see a fuzzy, blurry whitish odd shaped grayish comet-looking thing?  You don't see that?  Neither do I and that is a disappointment.  A small group of us went looking for the comet tonight out at the Vanderbilt Museum.  It was COLD - 28 degrees, and it was windy too - from 10 to 15 MPH winds.  The good news is that I was able to find the comet in my 8" diameter telescope, and I was able to show it to half a dozen people who wanted to see it.  So I did see it.  But I didn't manage to photograph it.  It was in the sky that didn't have any really bright stars as a reference.  So I did a series of photos where I took one photo then moved the camera to the left and took another and so on, a couple of times, but I was disappointed, when I got home, to discover the comet was not in any of the photos.  Oh well, at least I saw it with my own eyes through my telescope.  Such is the life of a comet hunter.