Morning Walk...

Clear, cold, and humid this morning.  The sky was clear and black, the stars beautiful.  The seasons seem to be just flying by – Orion is now high in the early morning sky, the Pleiades almost straight overhead.  Jupiter is low in the south, Aldebaran high, and Sirius is well above the eastern horizon.  The Big Dipper is starting to show up east of the North Star.  Seems like this “picture” jumped 30° in just the last few days...

Lots of coyotes were audible this morning, at least one band quite close by.  The dogs all ignored them.  Race was focused on his pine cone, as usual; the field spaniels on their important and urgent sniffing.

Daylight saving time ends in a month, which will make the sky picture jump again for me, by 15°.  I hate it when that happens...

Morning, and Mo'i...

Mo'i continues to do spectacularly well – for the past day or so, his behavior has been completely normal, as though he never had the surgery at all.

This morning, as on nearly every morning out here in the chaparral, the skies were clear and bright with stars and the moon. The constellations wheel clockwise around Polaris (the north star) with the seasons, and this time of year brings Orion up high in the morning's eastern sky. Orion was the first constellation I learned to recognize, and it's usually how I start orienting myself with the sky. Now bright, bright Sirius is also well above the eastern horizon in the early morning. The moon this morning was near Castor and Pollux, up by Orion's right arm. The Pleiadies (the Seven Sisters) were nearly directly overhead. And Ursa Major (the Big Dipper) is peeking up over the northern horizon, below and to the right of Polaris. A very nice morning for a little stargazing...