Sunrise/Sunset/Sky

Snow Squall

Photograph taken on Saturday, February 17, 2018 by Henry
Snow Squall

Snow Squall

The forecast was for snow today. It’s been in the upper 40s and even the low 50s lately, so I wasn’t really expecting it to amount to much. In the morning it was overcast but no precipitation. Cooler but still just above freezing. At about 2:00 PM it started snowing and by 3:00, when this picture was taken, it was coming down fairly hard. We probably got about 2 inches in all, but it was pretty wet and not what I’d call winter wonderland type snow. Still, the falling snow was pretty against the bare trees and the copper colored Japanese maple leaves in our neighbor’s yard.

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Rockville Cemetery

Photograph taken on Monday, February 05, 2018 by Henry
Rockville Cemetery

Rockville Cemetery

I stopped briefly at Rockville Cemetery on the way home. It isn’t on my normal route home but it isn’t all that far out of my way, either. I had to run to the bank after work, so that put it more or less convenient. The sun was setting through the trees to the west and I got a few pictures of the grave stones lit by the nearly horizontal rays. Then I turned at the upper part of the cemetery and took this one looking into the sun. Actually, it’s an HDR photo, make from three images and then mostly desaturated to produce the nearly monochrome image.

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Tree Tops

Photograph taken on Friday, February 02, 2018 by Henry
Tree Tops

Tree Tops

It’s been wintry again, which is alright by me, especially seeing as how it’s winter. Our winters are relatively mild compared to some but colder than others, which is sort of what living in a temperate climate is all about, I guess. I pretty much stayed in my office today, with a brief walk across campus and back for a meeting. Other than that I was focused on the task at hand. I took a short break in the early afternoon to take a few pictures but didn’t leave my office to do it. This is the top of a fairly large elm tree on the side of our parking lot. There are two of them that have managed to hold out against Dutch Elm Disease and this is the smaller of the two. They’re likely to go at some point but I’ll enjoy them until that day comes.

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Waxing Crescent Moon

Photograph taken on Saturday, January 20, 2018 by Henry
Waxing Crescent Moon

Waxing Crescent Moon

The new moon was four days ago, on January 16. The synodic period (the amount of time between full moons, or new moons or whatever) is 29 days, 12 hours, and about 44 minutes. The sidereal orbit (the orbit around the earth without regard to the relative position of the sun) is a little more than two days shorter than that, of course. In the time it takes the moon to circle the earth, the earth has moved almost one twelfth of the way around the sun and it takes the moon that extra two-plus days to get back into the same position relative to the sun and the earth. During the first quarter of the cycle, the moon is a growing (waxing) crescent (less than half visible). The second quarter it is waxing gibbous (more than half visible).

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Sunset

Photograph taken on Saturday, January 13, 2018 by Henry
Sunset

Sunset

We had a pretty spectacular sunset this evening and I enjoyed watching the bands of clouds turn a beautiful orange, against the darkening blue of the southwestern sky. It had been a pretty busy day, with folks moving into Cathy’s mom’s house and doing a very small bit more towards getting her things out of it. There is a lot more to do, of course. Nevertheless, a sunset like this helps me unwind and slow down. I stand on the back steps and just watch, occasionally lifting my camera to take yet another picture, as the colors grow more intense. Is a very healing activity and I’m thankful for beautiful sunsets (and sunrises) and the opportunities they provide.

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Sunset

Photograph taken on Tuesday, January 09, 2018 by Henry
Sunset

Sunset

As I was leaving work today, there was another nice sunset going on through the trees along the back edge of the parking lot. I took a few pictures, knowing these events are fleeting and if you don’t act quickly, you can easily miss them. Then I drove around to Cathy’s building to pick her up and as I turned into her parking lot, this is what I saw. I parked at the top of the lot, up the hill so as to get as much sky over the trees and the building on the left as possible. This one turned out pretty well, I think. These are not the colors I generally associate with sunset but they are what they are. Within about five minutes, all the color was gone except some deep blues as the sky faded to black.

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Evening Clouds

Photograph taken on Friday, January 05, 2018 by Henry
Evening Clouds

Evening Clouds

It was mostly clear today and fairly cool. As I was leaving work there was this one cloud to the east. As I stopped at a light, I grabbed my camera and got too pictures of it before the light changes and I had to watch where I was going. It’s been a busy few weeks and I’ve had a hard time getting pictures every day. I’ve managed but some days is a chore. I really appreciate sunsets because I generally don’t have to go far for the picture, especially when I’m in my car (and when I have traffic lights to stop me). This image is a little soft because it was taken through the windscreen, but it’s really more about the colors than anything else.

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Sunset

Photograph taken on Wednesday, December 27, 2017 by Henry
Sunset

Sunset

I stopped at the ICC commuter parking lot on the way home this evening. The sunset wasn’t particularly spectacular today but it’s the picture I got. To slightly alter a photographic adage, the best sunset is the one you have with you. To the south and northwest there were a few small clouds and a little subtle color but I wasn’t able to capture it well enough to be worth posting. To the west, looking towards the setting sun, there was a pretty orange color in the sky. Not overwhelming, but pretty.

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Yet Another Sunset

Photograph taken on Thursday, December 21, 2017 by Henry
Sunset from Commuter Parking Lot

Sunset from Commuter Parking Lot

Finding a good location to take sunset pictures is worth the trouble. You don’t always have time to get to them, of course, but if you see a sunset shaping up, it’s nice to know where to head. This evening we had been in Olney and were coming down Georgia Avenue. Ahead of us and to the right, where the sun was setting, there were no clouds. Behind us, however, to the northeast, where you don’t generally think of looking for sunset colors, there was a large bank of clouds that were beginning to show some nice color. I pulled into the ICC Commuter parking lot and we walked to the top of the hill separating it from the ICC (MD 200). This picture was taken looking almost directly away from the sun, from due north (on the left) to the east (on the right). This is a three photo panorama, taken with a 24mm lens.

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Sunrise

Photograph taken on Tuesday, December 19, 2017 by Henry
Sunrise

Sunrise

Are there more pretty sunsets in the winter than in the summer? I honestly don’t know the answer to that. It seems like it but maybe it’s just that I’m up before the sun quite a bit more often in the winter. This was taken at 7:32 this morning. That’s about as late as the sun rises around here. In the summer, I’m only up before the sun on rare occasions. Anyway, I saw the colored light from inside and grabbed my camera, going out into the front yard to get this. I also got the final inspection for the bathroom remodel this morning (a little later). So, a good start to the day.

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Sunset Through The Woods

Photograph taken on Tuesday, December 12, 2017 by Henry
Sunset Through The Woods

Sunset Through The Woods

The other day as I was leaving work there was a beautiful sunset but it was obscured by the woods along the edge of my office parking lot. I thought that if I hurried, I could get to the other side of the woods and get a good picture before it was gone. I was wrong. I wasn’t half way there before the color was all gone from the sky. So, when I saw some good color through the trees I didn’t bother trying to get around the trees. If I had, I’d have been disappointed again. Instead I just took a few pictures through the trees. It’s maybe a little less spectacular than if I had been on the other side, but it’s certainly better than no trees and no sunset colors. We take what we can get.

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Sunset

Photograph taken on Sunday, December 10, 2017 by Henry
Sunset

Sunset

It was a cool but pretty day today with a little bit of snow still on the ground from yesterday. It happens to also be my birthday and I’m 29 again. Actually, I’m 29 twice, if you know what I mean. We had a fairly busy day but ended it with a wonderful meal and a nice visit with our long-time friend, Yvette (who was one of Cathy’s bridesmaids many moons ago). Just before we left for her house I got some pictures of the sunset from the back door. It was a good one.

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Sunset

Photograph taken on Monday, December 04, 2017 by Henry
Sunset

Sunset

I know, I know. Yet another sunset. Actually, they seem to be popular and we’ve been blessed with some nice, if somewhat understated sunsets lately. I had a very busy day at work and really didn’t lift my head from my computer until it was nearly time to go home. When I turned around there was just a little bit of pink in the sky. My office windows faces north, though, and this was taken after I went outside, looking to the south west, where there was considerably more color in the sky. The best color was due west but there are woods that direction and most of the view was obscured by the trees.

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Perigee Syzygy

Photograph taken on Sunday, December 03, 2017 by Henry
Full Moon

Full Moon

As you probably learned in school, the moon’s orbit around the earth is not circular but elliptical. On average, the moon is 385,000 kilometers (239,000 miles) from earth but tonight is was at perigee, that is at the closest point in its orbit to the earth, and 357,492 km (222,135 miles) from earth. It’s also near syzygy, which is when the moon, earth, and sun all line up (which is when there is a lunar or solar eclipse). Because it’s not exactly at syzygy, it’s just a bigger than normal full moon. George loaned me his telescope a while back and I got it out this evening to see if I could get anything worth while. I bought a t-ring adapter and this is my first chance to use it.

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Pre-Sunset Sky

Photograph taken on Saturday, December 02, 2017 by Henry
Pre-Sunset Sky

Pre-Sunset Sky

The clouds to the west showed a lot of promise this evening and I was really hoping for a spectacular sunset. Unfortunately, the color never really developed. The timing of positioning of the clouds and what little color there was didn’t line up, either, so I had to make do with this picture, taken about 20 minutes before the color would have been best. This is looking south-west from out back door. It’s convenient to have a view like that on the days we do get color, but you can’t always get what you want.

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Sunset

Photograph taken on Friday, December 01, 2017 by Henry
Sunset

Sunset

On Tuesday of last week I took a picture of a sunset, which I posted here. That was taken in the parking lot of our local Safeway store after I came out from a brief shopping trip. This evening I stopped at Safeway to pick up a prescription and as I parked, I saw this to the west. Naturally I took a few moments to get some pictures before going inside. Most of the sky was clear, but with my 100mm lens, I could concentrate on the small amount of color just over the buildings.

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Sunset

Photograph taken on Tuesday, November 21, 2017 by Henry
Sunset

Sunset

On the way home from work I stopped at the grocery store to buy a few things. When I came out, the sun was setting and the light on the clouds was quite beautiful. I didn’t have time to get anywhere more open so I took a handful of pictures from the shopping center parking lot. With my 100mm lens I was able to avoid the buildings and parking lot lights and concentrate on the colors. This one turned out pretty well, I think.

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Great Blue Heron

Photograph taken on Tuesday, October 03, 2017 by Henry
Great Blue Heron

Great Blue Heron

I stopped at Upper Rock Creek Park (a.k.a. Lake Needwood) today on the way home from work. I like to do that now and then, especially in the spring when new things are coming up or in the fall when the leaves are so lovely. But neither of those are true right now, so I’m not entirely sure why I did. But I did. As I walked down through the woods I saw a great blue heron fly across the lake and land in a dead tree on a point just a little way ahead. I knew there was a path out onto that point so I made my way there, walking as quietly as I could. The path goes steeply down the hill at the end, right under the tree the bird was in and I was only able to get three pictures as it flew off, almost directly into the sun. So, it’s not necessarily what I was hoping for but it’s probably better then I should have expected.

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Evening Light

Photograph taken on Monday, October 02, 2017 by Henry
Evening Light

Evening Light

This didn’t turn out nearly as well as I had hoped and doesn’t really show the orange tint to the light on the upper parts of the trees in our front yard. It was a beautiful, cool evening. When I came home from work I took my shoes off and walked in the grass in the front yard, which was cool and damp and felt wonderful. The color of the light shifted just before sunset and it was one of those subtly beautiful evenings. It wasn’t spectacular, like a sunset with colorful clouds, but it was quietly lovely.

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Sunset

Photograph taken on Thursday, September 21, 2017 by Henry
Sunset

Sunset

I hadn’t taken any pictures during the day today but as the evening progressed I had a feeling we might get a nice sunset. The clouds were nice and the conditions seemed right. At about 6:45 I took some pictures of the clouds but of course at that point there wasn’t really any color in them. They were just pretty clouds against a blue sky. Sunset was at 7:06 and as that approached, the light that had been on the clouds went away and the turned from white to grey. There was a little color in the eastern sky, so I went around to the front of the house and got a few pictures of that, but it wasn’t all that spectacular. Coming back to the backyard, though, the western sky had finally turned. This was taken at 7:13 PM, seven minutes or so after official sunset.

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Solar Eclipse

Photograph taken on Monday, August 21, 2017 by Henry
Solar Eclipse

Solar Eclipse

In case you’ve been living in a cave for the last month or so, there was a total solar eclipse across the middle of the lower 48 states today. The area of totality was far enough south of us that I didn’t feel any great need to visit Dana or Alan, cousins in Nashville, TN and Columbia, SC respectively. We would have something to watch here, even if it wasn’t as spectacular as what they’d get. I made two pinhole cameras, one to leave with Dorothy and the other to take with me to work. Cathy and I went out and watched with a lot of other folk from work, some with eclipse glasses, others with their own pinhole box cameras, and some looking at the image in my box, which was rigged up on the ground and was easily viewed. That made it easy to track the progress of the eclipse.

Nature's Pinhole Camera

Nature’s Pinhole Camera

The first image here was taken at 2:38, about four minutes before it reached its maximum obscuration of just over 80%. There were clouds moving past for the next six or seven minutes, so this was the best I got. I know it isn’t anywhere near as good as what some folks will get, but I’m pretty pleased with it.

The second picture is the shade thrown by a walnut tree by the side of the parking lot. As you can see, each place where light comes through the leaves acts like a pinhole camera, projecting a crescent image on the ground.

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Raindrops On A Pond

Photograph taken on Thursday, August 10, 2017 by Henry
Raindrops On A Pond

Raindrops On A Pond

It continues to be quite busy at work but today was something of a turning point in the project I’m working on. I made a lot of progress and it’s starting to come together. There is still plenty more to do, but I’m a little less panicked now. At about 4:30 I decided to take a short break and go outside to take a few pictures. I got a few that I think are nice but as I was heading back to my office it started to sprinkle a little. There is a drainage pond near the sidewalk, just through the trees, and I made my way to it and took this picture of the raindrops softly landing on the surface of the pond.

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Sunrise, Ocean Isle Beach

Photograph taken on Wednesday, August 02, 2017 by Henry
Sunrise, Ocean Isle Beach

Sunrise, Ocean Isle Beach

When you plan your beach trip months in advance, you never know what sort of weather you’re going to get. Some years it’s very hot and muggy, others, relatively cool and pleasant. This year was a cool and pleasant year, a rare but welcome occurrence. I think it barely broke 85°F the whole week. This morning was the only day with a sunrise worth getting up for. The other days either had completely clear or (on Friday) an entirely overcast sky. Today’s sunrise made up for the other days’ lack, though. There were a lot of folks out on the beach at 6:30 watching it, looking for shells in the sand as the tide ebbed (high tide was about two hours previous to this picture).

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Sunset, Ocean Isle Beach

Photograph taken on Saturday, July 29, 2017 by Henry
Sunset, Ocean Isle Beach

Sunset, Ocean Isle Beach

As many of you know, we were at the beach last week. I’m going to try to get caught up posting pictures so expect two per day for the next week. We had a relatively easy drive down on Saturday, covering the 420 or so miles in a little over 7.5 hours. It was drizzling when we left home, then south of Richmond we had mostly sunny skies. We had rain going around Wilmington, NC and it was cloudy and threatening after that. The sunset was pretty amazing, with the color from the sky turning the ocean an amazing color.

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Sunset

Photograph taken on Tuesday, July 18, 2017 by Henry
Sunset, Rockville

Sunset, Rockville

I took a few pictures of flowers in the yard when I got home but then I went to my men’s meeting and on the way home stopped to take a few sunset pictures. This was taken from Veterans Park at the intersection of Veirs Mill Road and Rockville PIke, looking west (obviously). I like that there is some color reflected in the building on the left. We haven’t had a lot of spectacular sunsets lately so we’ll take what we get. That’s one feature of the spring and fall that I particularly like, though, along with the cooler temperatures, of course.

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Sunset

Photograph taken on Monday, June 19, 2017 by Henry
Sunset

Sunset

We had a rip-roaring thunderstorm this evening. We didn’t lose power although it flickered once. The lightning was near by for a while, though. It rained quite hard for a while, then rained most softly off and on for a while longer. As the sun was setting, it began to clear and the sky turned orange for a little while, mostly close to the horizon. It wasn’t the most spectacular sunset I’ve ever seen but it was very pretty for about fifteen minutes. Then the color was gone and it got dark. A nice ending to a hot, muggy day.

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Clouds

Photograph taken on Tuesday, May 02, 2017 by Henry
Clouds

Clouds

I love clouds. There are days when I could just lie on the grass and watch them for hours. Actually, I’d almost always much rather do that than sit in my office and work. But then, I understand if you stop coming to the office they stop paying you. That’s an incentive. But watching clouds is so nice. This afternoon I found a spot with a good, uninterrupted view of the sky and took this picture, along with about ten more, of the clouds. This one was taken with my 10-20mm zoom pulled in to 20mm. I took some wider shots but frankly, with clouds its hard to tell which are which.

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Evening Clouds

Photograph taken on Monday, May 01, 2017 by Henry
Evening Clouds

Evening Clouds

When I got home from work this evening I took some pictures of flowers in the yard. Then, just before 8:00, as the sun was getting ready to set, I went out with Cathy and we enjoyed watching the clouds rushing across the darkening sky. They were moving quite fast and mostly were just dark. Actually, what I first got my camera for was to take pictures of the light in the tree tops. The trees were in shadow, except for the tops which were lit with bright orange. Occasionally a piece of cloud would also light up, and that’s what I have picked for you today.

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Near Essex, Mass.

Photograph taken on Wednesday, April 26, 2017 by Henry
Near Essex, Mass.

Near Essex, Mass.

Dorothy was in class again today so Cathy and I were on our own. We had breakfast in a little place in Manchester by the Sea and then drove up towards Essex. We wanted to be outdoors and I thought some of the tidal marshes in the area would be pretty. As it turns out, we got there at just about high tide for one of the highest tides of the year. Also, it was overcast and a bit foggy, which gave the whole scene an eerie, surreal quality. We had a lovely chat with a local homeowner who was out with her dog and then enjoyed the view.

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Clouds and Trees

Photograph taken on Tuesday, April 04, 2017 by Henry
Clouds and Trees

Clouds and Trees

I was stopped at a traffic light and looking in front of my I saw these trees with clouds behind them. At first I though about getting my camera out but then figured I didn’t really have time. By the time I realized I probably did have time, I only was able to get off one quick picture as traffic started moving again. The alignment isn’t quite what I would have liked. If I had been slightly back from my position the clouds would have been slightly higher, but it’s not like I could move back to get a better angle. Anyway, pretty spring clouds on a lovely day.

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