We don’t exactly know why, but this image gets more hits than almost anything we have ever posted on our blog. All we know, is that when you Google® “Red and White Amaryllis” in an image search, this picture is at the top of the search results.
Given the season, I can understand a lot of searches for a red and white amaryllis. And, it is a nice picture, if I do say so myself. Click on the image to enlarge.
One way to keep track of the weather is to find webcams near the area in which you’re interested. Today, after the storm passed through, I took a look at the webcam on the Mount Wilson Solar Observation Tower. I saw this snowy fairyland and the observatory dome housing the famous Hooker 100 inch Newtonian Telescope at the left.
Here’s some history on the Hooker Telescope from the Mount Wilson Observatory:
The Hooker 100-inch telescope is named after John D. Hooker, who provided the funds for the giant mirror. It was the largest telescope in the world from 1917 to 1948 when the 200-inch telescope was built on Palomar Mountain 90 miles to the southeast. Many great discoveries were made with the 100-inch telescope Edwin Hubble’s refinement of the distance scale of the universe. The first optical interferometer ever used for astronomical research was used on the 100-inch telescope to measure the sizes of distant stars for the first time in 1919.
The 100-inch telescope has three optical configurations available to meet the requirements of a wide variety research projects. A very high-resolution spectrograph is located at the telescope’s Coudé focus. Located on the ground floor of the 100-inch telescope dome, the Aluminizing Room is used to recoat all of the telescope mirrors at the observatory.
This blue sunburst is in my Mom’s garden. Since we didn’t see any sun today – neither yellow nor blue – I’m posting a little blue sunshine on our site today. Hopefully, we will see some yellow sunshine soon.
I was at Mom and Dad’s today. They live near the Los Angeles Airport. I took this picture of an airliner on approach to the airport from their front yard. I thought the sun and the clouds made a nice backdrop for the airplane. Click for a larger view.
Normally, when visiting the seashore, I take panoramic images of the coastline and surf. This time, however, in addition to the usual, I turned around and took a panoramic series of shots of the area behind the cove and combined them into this view. This was taken near Roessler Point, Malaga Cove, Palos Verdes Estates, CA. Click on the image for the full-sized panorama.
We spent part of our day at the indoor shooting range doing some target practice. It was cool outside but on the range we were right at home warming up our firearms and sharpening up our accuracy. Here’s a photo of Verna as she draws a bead with her 20 gauge Remington 870 on a paper target at 7 yards.
We really had a lot of fun shooting today. Click the picture above to enlarge.
