Wondering about wild flowers and the night sky.

I have a post office box at our local post office and usually six days a week my wife and I go get the mail.  We always come back home the “back way”.  Each time for the last few weeks, we have seen a fellow’s front field just filled with blue bonnets and Indian paint brushes.  For some reason I never have my camera.  Saturday, when coming back from the flea market we stopped at the post office and came home the usual route via the back way.  I had my camera in my pocket and was ready to get some pictures.  This field is on a corner and when I pulled up to the stop sign, I saw that some people had climbed through the fence and were walking through this “private” field.  Anyway, I rolled the passenger side window down, handed the camera to my wife and said take a couple of pictures, which she did.  Here are those pictures:

Saturday, I lugged all the pieces to my big telescope out and got it all assembled.  Spent the last of Saturday and the last of Sunday looking at the sky.  Since I sat it up on the deck on the east side of my house and with all the tall trees all around, I had a very limited patch of sky to see.  I took a pair of binoculars and walked around to the front yard (looking west) and looked at the beautiful naked eye trio that was on display.  The beautiful thin crescent moon, along with extremely bright Venus and spectacular Jupiter were putting on a great show.  Back on east side, Mars was gleaming with a reddish glow at about a magnitude of -1.1.  Mars must have been blushing about something.  In respect to each other, Jupiter was twice as bright as Mars at -2.1 and Venus was trice as bright as Jupiter with a -4.4.

I put the scope on Mars, almost too bright to view.  Used a oxygen-2 filter and that helped some.  I also swung the scope over to Orion before I looked at Mars.  The Orion Nebula never ceases to amaze me, I can look at it for a long time without getting tired of the view.  It was beautiful with and without the O2 filter.  I watched it again last night until it disappeared behind the roof of my house.  If that scope wasn’t so heavy, I would move it to the front of the house, there is a lot more going on to the west, but my back is still hurting from putting it outside.  I believe the manufacturer said it was 265 pounds and of course the three major parts are not the same weight so some are a little lighter than a third and some heavier.

Please, if you haven’t gone out after dark the last few evenings, just take a few minutes, let your eyes adjust to the dark, take a pair of binoculars if you have them, and go out just after it gets dark and look at the beauty in the night sky at this time.  Now, you all have a great day, you hear?