Earth Explorations

I hear Sunday Feb 2 is the Superb Owl Day. In all modesty, I think this photo I took of a burrowing owl last summer is kind of superb. I shared it on iNaturalist and...  What? Oh.

Christmas Day Sunrise Christmas to me has been, and still is, about light. I love the lights on the Christmas trees and displays in yards and on houses. So festive and welcome during these long nights. The Christmas season is also the Winter Solstice season. The Winter Solstice marks the day when the amount of day light slowly, gradually, starts to increase. The daily addition of a few seconds and minutes of sunlight results in the days of June being hours longer than the days of December. And here in the Northern Hemisphere, not only do we get a change in quantity of sunlight after the Winter Solstice, we start to get a change in quality too as the Sun rays become more intense. We are not sensible of the Earth's perpetual tilt (perpetual in terms of human scale that is) towards the North Star but it's this perpetual tilt to another star beyond the Sun that means the Northern Hemisphere lists towards the Sun roughly April through September and away from it October thro...