The Teapot

I had a wonderful evening observing last night!  It was a magnificent night, nearly as clear as can be, and the brilliance of the stars was breathtaking.  This is what amateur observers hope for.  Mainly I went out to look at some of the fascinating objects that are in the universe - stars, galaxies, nebulae and star clusters, with one of my telescopes.  But I brought my camera and a camera tracking platform and tried making a few photographs.  This is the constellation Sagittarius, the archer, with the star clouds of the Milky Way rising into the sky - a spectacular sight with the dark lanes of dust intruding into the star clouds.  This is the most spectacular part of the entire sky, in my view.  There is an asterism which is part of the constellation, called "the Teapot" and it is easy to see if you know where to look.  I have done an unusual thing, and drawn lines on the photo connecting the stars, to show you the teapot.  The sad part of all of this, is that very few people can actually see the Milky Way, if they live in populated areas, because of light pollution.  The Milky Way is such a spectacular sight, it is a shame that so few people get to see it.  Please click on this image to see it in greater detail.

Ghostly

My apologies for being so late with this post.  I drove out to Southold last night to do some astronomical observing with my telescope and photography at Custer Institute.  Arrived home at 3 AM, thus no post last night.  So I showed you the magnificent Hibiscus blossom yesterday, in stunning color.  Just for the heck of it, I also shot it in infrared, and this is the result.  To me this is just a stunning photograph.  It just seems ghostly, and absolutely beautiful in black and white.  The more I look at it, the more I love it.

In Full Bloom

This Hibiscus has been on the front porch all summer.  There were blooms, but they were less than perfect, I think because of the heat.  Funny how this plant works - it blooms and then all the blooms fall off after a single day.  There are rolled up blooms the next morning all over the porch.  But it has come into its own now that the weather is a bit cooler, and today all the blooms were just stunning!  Here is one of them.  Wait and see what I will show you tomorrow.

Caution: Bee at Work

I went back and took a look at my shoot in the wildflower garden and found this.  I forgot about shooting the bee.  I did make about half a dozen exposures of this bee at work, and this one is the best because you can see the bee from the side.  Man, that bee was all over the plant,  taking pollen from all over the yellow part.  You could even say it was "as busy as a bee!"

The Sky Was On Fire

I decided to go down to Sea Cliff Beach, to watch the sunset, in hopes I might find a photograph.  I was thinking that maybe I could get the sun reflecting off the water or something like that.  But the disk of the sun was behind the clouds.  What I got instead was the appearance that the sky was on fire.  I'll take that instead!  Water, boats and the sky.  How can you loose?

Yellow & Green

I stopped to photograph some wildflowers up the road that are in a border garden alongside the street.  I struggled to get a really nice composition with good looking blossoms.  I am not sure I got anything decent.  As I was walking back to my car, this scene jumped out at me, from a street garden next door.  What a great combination, ferns and Black Eyed Susans!  Just delightful.  A winner, in my book.  Whew!

Rain Today, Finally

Finally, some rain, and cooler temperatures.  Amazing to have the temperatures go from 94 down to 65 in a relatively short time.  So how do I photograph the rain in a new way?  Not sure if this is new, though.  I was thinking about how to find a photo for today, as I was driving back home, and as I parked the car in front of the garage, I turned off the windshield wipers and watched the water drops form on the windshield.  And I watched the world become more abstract.