John Burridge: Sirius

Showing posts with label Sirius. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 13, 2019

The Moon and Orion (Again)

We got home just as the last of the blue left the evening sky. The moon was between Orion and Taurus. I managed to get a wide shot with Sirius in the lower left-hand corner and the Moon on the other side of Orion on the upper-right.

I played around with various settings. I hadn't realized how much haze the camera was picking up, and I wish we'd gotten home a little earlier because the bluer sky would have compensated. The best shots seemed to be with the Moon Setting. When I tried manual settings, the shutter speed was too fast.

I tried to get a shot of the Moon and the constellation of Taurus, but the pictures didn't come out with the V of the bull showing up so well. I think the camera's auto-focus works best when the moon is half full.

Sunday, September 01, 2013

Still Life with Sky

I forced myself to get up this morning to write. So far all I've done is make tea and look at the pre-dawn Moon, Jupiter, Sirius and Orion. In the intervening period, the sky has grown lighter and now all I can find are the Moon and Jupiter (and Sirius if I look where I know it was a few minutes ago.

This has been the week for weddings. Last weekend my cousin Molly got married in a Washington State Park. This weekend my other cousin Kevin gets married in his family's vineyard.

Now Jupiter is looking like Sirius did a half hour ago, and Sirius is a hidden blue spark twinkling above the power lines. The Moon is a brighish sliver, which was blueish a moment ago, ad the Old Moon in Her Arms has blendied in with the pastel sky.

The quality of the morning isn't silence, it's the small sounds in the distance. Before the crows started calling, and the neighbor's hen decided she wanted to sound like a guy. The whisper of semi-truck tires on the thoroughfare. The distant thunder of a car engine. A screen door opening, then closing. The throb of the box fan in the house, and the flap of feathered wings.

The sun hasn't rissen, yet; but the light in the sky jumped a notch and chased away any purples lingering in the dawn's pastels. Now Jupiter is the hidden spark, and Sirius is an optical illusion.

And now the birds are quiet, and the road noises are quite, and the only thing I can hear out on the deck is the quiet tap-tappnig of my keyboard and the rumble of the boxfan and 'fridge. Surprisingly, no freight train has sounded its whistle.

I can't see -- no, wait, there's Jupiter, doing Sirius's optical illusion trick now that Sirius is done with it. The Moon looks warmer, and there's a red tint coming up over the houses to the east.

There isn't a cloud in the sky. I think today is going to be very warm.