use real butter

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I suppose people have completed their festive meals, had their family brawls, drunk too much, and are ready to pass out by now? Ahhh, the good old days. Jeremy and I try not to travel over the Thanksgiving holiday. Driving or flying with potential delays, death, or dismemberment due to weather or stupidity or both can really take years off of your life. We really do cherish our sanity. This year we turned down a few invitations and opted for a quiet meal at home.

As expected, I ditched the notion of a turkey dinner in favor of something easier and in my opinion, far tastier. Rather than one ginormous blowout meal, we grazed through three courses starting at noon. My original plan involved surf and turf, but driving home from the grocery store earlier in the week, I came to the conclusion that I was planning an obscene amount of food for Thanksgiving. Thus we had surf and surf and surf… Turf got booted to tomorrow.

In the morning I prepared parts of dessert and made some treats for my pup. I cook all the time, so much so that the dog will snooze under the kitchen table as I work or wander into the great room to soak up all of the sunlight striking the Earth’s surface. She knows better than to beg while I prep. Somehow, she clues in when I am making something for her and she’ll come around sniffing at the edge of the table or she’ll plant herself squarely in front of me, waiting ever so patiently…

kaweah loves squirrels

**Jump for more butter**

We are fast approaching the winter solstice here. That means less daylight hours. In our house, it also means the blinding light of late afternoon… and when I say late afternoon, I really mean 3 pm onward. In summer, the sun is high in the sky. But if you think about the Earth’s obliquity at 23.5 degrees and my latitude around 40 degrees, we are talking about a sun incidence angle at max of 63.5 degrees from vertical or 26.5 degrees above the horizon. Our windows face south and in the afternoon that means our windows get the sun full bore. See here.

3:30 pm from the kitchen

[Puke carpet: Kaweah decided to share just how much bark she ate yesterday afternoon by yakking it up on the edge of an area rug this morning. Right after I hosed it off outside, it began to snow, so I had to drag it inside and then it stopped snowing.] Not only does the sun hit me square in the face, but our passive solar set up makes the house HOT. Don’t get me wrong, hot is good because we want to trap that heat so we don’t blow a fortune on heating the house at night when it gets cold. But hot is rather miserable if you’re trying to cook or shoot or think. I’m not a fan of hot… that’s why I live near snow.

unpleasant

**Jump for more butter**

I’ve been cooking a lot, but not able to shoot much since my in-laws are visiting and we are entertaining them for the weekend. However, tonight as I was waiting for the dog to do her business out in the yard, I noticed the skies overhead had cleared. It’s nice, the night sky. It’s especially brilliant up in the mountains because the Milky Way practically jumps out at you and we have almost no light pollution to speak of. I look skyward a lot. I’ve loved astronomy since my childhood – it’s why I studied science. It might be why I married an astrophysicist. No, I married him because it reduced our car insurance (and because he makes my heart go pitter patter).

Kaweah was taking her time looking for the Perfect Place to Poop. I knew Comet Holmes was somewhere in the north, but not sure where exactly. Jeremy poked his head out the front door and asked what was taking the dog so long. Who knew, but I told him I was looking for the comet. He went back inside and returned a second later with the binoculars. He looked around Cassiopeia, but couldn’t find anything and handed me the binocs. I pointed in the general direction and just tried to get them focused. The object I pointed at was totally blurry, so I focused and nothing happened. I noticed the other objects nearby were nice pinpoints of light, but this thing… it was Comet Holmes.

Dog was now just screwing around in the dark, sniffing things and exploring. I ran in to fetch camera equipment and ran back out into the blackness to set up. I was shivering – it was maybe 20 degrees. But I got it – right in Perseus.

holmes-boy will be around for a while

The first exposure was too long and the stars were dragging. My second exposure was the best I could do to reduce drag, but still expose for the comet. It is HUGE. There’s no tail because the comet is coming toward us. Right now it is in the neighborhood of Jupiter. It has increased in brightness by more than 6 orders of magnitude over the past week. You can see it with the naked eye, but it looks like another star – a bright one.

Anyway, that’s a nibble on science for you. Stay tuned, Comet Holmes should be getting bigger and brighter. Step outside and have a look for yourself.

Science!!!