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Category: sky

Look to the Rainbow

Look to the Rainbow

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I knew what it was before I saw it. I knew it from the jaded commuters standing slack-jawed outside the Metro station, then grabbing their phones and snapping away. I knew that on this October Tuesday, our gray day of rain was being rewarded with a rainbow. And not just any rainbow — but a complete arch that spanned all of Route 66.

The rainbow was spotted in other parts of the region, too. I have a reliable rainbow-sighting report from Reagan National Airport, though no pots of gold were found.

The longer I looked at the rainbow the more the colors revealed themselves. At one point there was even a double bow.

What heartened me most were the rainbow-spotters themselves. Not much will slow commuters from reaching home in the evening, but the rainbow was doing just that. I snapped half a dozen shots of the heavens on my way to the car … and I wasn’t the only one.

January Sky

January Sky

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It’s a good time of year to look up. I snapped this shot just before getting on Metro yesterday. It was later than I would like to have been leaving, but it gave me the chance to see the sky on fire.

It was a quieter sky this morning, one mottled with clouds but striking in its own way.  I took this photograph while walking around the block at the Courthouse Metro Station, which it how I occupy myself when I’ve just missed the bus.

Two mornings, two cloudscapes, both ripe for the picking. All I needed to do was stop, point and shoot. But it can be hard even to take the time to do this.  How many other sky shots have I missed?

Moon Walk

Moon Walk

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The story last night was the moon, large and sultry and almost full. I had already walked in the morning, but when I got home last night I had to walk a little bit more, just to keep it company.

I watched it through the trees, waited for it to rise high enough to snap a shot of it free and clear.

But the chili was simmering on the stove back home, darkness was falling, and I realized I was strolling along neighborhood streets (no sidewalks, of course) wearing all black.

It was time to go home. The moon would have to wait. So I snapped a few more photos …

Then called it a night …

Supermoon

Supermoon

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The supermoon woke me at 3:37 a.m., poured its rays into
the room, feigning daylight. No wonder my stay-asleep mechanism was
overwhelmed. Nothing to do with the fact that this is my first day back in the office since December 21. 
I read a while, ignored the moonbeams and drifted back. All the while this meteorological marvel, what astronomers call the perigee syzygy, was beaming down on the frigid landscape. It was lighting up the salt crystals on the road and the little patches of snow still left from last week’s dusting.
By the time I left for work, it was low in the sky, just above the treetops, and I quickly snapped the shot above.  (Quickly, because it was 7 degrees outside and I was anxious to put my gloves on.)
We’re closer to the moon during a perigee syzygy than we are otherwise. And tomorrow is the perihelion, the point in earth’s orbit when we’re closest to the sun. Thanks to these heavenly bodies for lighting our way, and for making the dark, cold hours so much more bearable. 
This supermoon is from November 14, 2016. I saw it glinting on the Java Sea from the island of Sumba, Indonesia. Photo:  Wikipedia
Seeing Stars

Seeing Stars

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It was warmer this morning than the last few days, high 40s. Reason to pull on tights, sweatshirt and reflective vest, grab the flashlight and take a pre-dawn walk.

The crescent moon was out, the one that lets you see a faint image of the rest of the orb, like an eyeball pulsing beneath an almost-closed lid.

But that’s not what caught my attention. It was the stars.

I noticed them on the return, when I felt comfortable enough in the dark to look up. And there they were, so far away, so bright, so essential. I took a mental snapshot, have them with me now in the fluorescent-lit office, where I’ve found a quiet, unlit corner to write these words, to try and see stars again.

(Photo: Wikipedia)

The Light, Again

The Light, Again

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I stopped walking this morning long enough to take this shot.

“I almost did the same thing,” said a neighbor, running past me in the opposite direction. The light would have slanted in a bit lower through the tress when he passed this tunnel of green.

Not that I’m complaining about the angle I got to see. Seeing light pour through the trees first thing in the morning reminds me that there is more on heaven and earth than we can ever comprehend. We’re lucky if we have eyes to see and a lens to capture. But the light is there for us even if we don’t.

Blue Sky Day

Blue Sky Day

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It was a blue sky day at the bay, a day spent with my brother and sister. This meant we could talk about Dad, and his habit of standing at the threshold of a doorway, stretching out his arms and saying, “Look at that, not a cloud in the sky.”

We joked that had Dad turned around, he might have noticed looming thunderheads. But he didn’t turn around; he ignored the clouds. He kept his gaze resolutely blue-skyward. An excellent trait — until you’re caught unprepared in a sudden downpour.

No matter, we loved him — and we carried umbrellas, learned to look for and deal with the rain and clouds and gloom.

Still, that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy a blue-sky day when one is given to us.  And one was, yesterday — a glorious day.

Moon Shadow

Moon Shadow

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I took the flashlight, but I didn’t use it. The moon was bright enough to light the road and throw shadows on it — dense and hulking where woods meets the road, a more delicate tracery where only a tree or two (and earth’s atmosphere) stood between me and the orb.

The illuminated landscape was like a negative, an inside-out version of the view. Devoid of life and color, a dreamscape in black and white.

I passed no cars until I was on the way home, their harsh, artificial glare a counterpoint to the natural light.

It was like plunging into another world, this early morning walk, like visiting a barren island nation.

October Sky

October Sky

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Out early for a walk this morning, just chilly enough for a light sweatshirt. The skies were clear and bright. I thought, as I often do when faced with the infinite, that I’d like to understand it better.

Not all of it, of course. Just to nibble around the edges of it, to know a little about astronomy, for instance.

Overhead for my walk this morning was one of the dippers, the little one, I think, and also Polaris, the North Star.

What a comfort to walk beneath this canopy of light, to feel both small and enlarged at the same time. Because isn’t that what infinity does for us? Puts us in our place but also connects us with something larger than ourselves.

(Photo: Earthsky.org; title: Homer Hickham)

Late Light Walk

Late Light Walk

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It was almost 7 p.m. last night but the air was so fresh and still, so lit up from the inside, that I just had to pull over and walk through it.

Luckily, I was near a Reston path. So I laced up my spare tennis shoes and hit the trail.

I’ve just been reading Annie Dillard (more about her in a later post) and am sorely conscious of how beautifully light can be described.  So let me just say that I felt as I was walking through a painting by Thomas Cole or other Hudson River School painter. I felt that the light was shimmering all around me, that it was bouncing off the trees and the darker shapes and illuminating them, too.

It wasn’t quite as dramatic as these photos (snapped, ironically enough, quite near the Hudson River, on the train trip home night before last) but it had some of this drama.

It was dark by the end of my walk, but that didn’t matter. I was all lit up inside.