It was a nice sunny day today, so of course I spent it in a stuffy room with a bunch of stuffy bridge players, came third/eleven! En route home, I encountered a little professorial type with two giant telescopes offering a free view of the heavens. I've met such amateur astronomers before when I got to see Venus, but this guy offered up something truly amazing. He had a shot of Saturn and everything was aligned up so perfectly that you could see the rings perfectly. It was magnificent and if I hadn't seen it with my own peepers, I would swear it was fake. He also had the half moon lined up, certainly not as dramatic, but cool nonetheless. Alas, my phone doesn't take the best celestial photos.
He gave myself and another eager witness a couple of his own photos and here they are!
While my mind is on the stars, here is May's Sky Map as scammed (scanned) from Skymaps which you can always download yourself for free!
Because it's 母の日 or Haha no hi/ Mother's Day, I sent my mom's name into orbit!
You can do so too by clicking here and entering your mom's name. Anyone's name that you enter will be entered onto a microchip and sent to the moon! Since my mom has been in a hospital bed for a decade, I don't think she'll be able to make the trip herself, so this is the next best thing.
Valentine's Day is coming soon, so I'm putting in a request for one of these. I so want to eat its head! 
On Christmas Eve, I checked out the news occasionally to see what progress Santa was making on his rounds. When we were kids, the local news would use radar footage of a bleeping sleigh flying through the clouds. I used this useful tidbit in one of my lessons and my students were quite fascinated by it. So I took a few pics off the screen and here they are. I think using CGI and NORAD takes a bit of the mystery out of the whole deal, don't you?
(the Wheel of Dharma)
