Stargazing
Last night, we decided that we wanted to take a stab at seeing the celestial shows on offer: the Leonids and the comet. So we took off in the middle of the night and drove up to the Berkeley hills, above the fog and into the parking lot for the Lawrence Hall of Science.
The comet was a bust; we couldn't find it at all. Either the area where we were was too bright, or we weren't looking in the right place, or something, but we never found it. The meteorites did a little better -- T saw a shooting star as we stepped out of the car, and then around midnight I saw like six in the space of two minutes, and a couple of them were really impressive. I did better with the Perseids back in August, but it was still fairly cool; I didn't feel like the trip had been wasted.
But the real winner of the evening was the fog:
The nearby glowing bits are the UC Berkeley campus. Then you can see the fog stretching out over the Bay to where radio towers poke up in San Francisco. You can see those better in this larger version, along with some stars. It's quite a view during the day, but there was something really cool about seeing it all at night, shrouded in fog.
For some unrelated photographic goodness, I refer you to anzubird's photos of our trip to the San Diego Zoo. Sadly, my camera died the day before, so I don't have my own photos to share. But there's some great ones in here, especially the lynx.
The comet was a bust; we couldn't find it at all. Either the area where we were was too bright, or we weren't looking in the right place, or something, but we never found it. The meteorites did a little better -- T saw a shooting star as we stepped out of the car, and then around midnight I saw like six in the space of two minutes, and a couple of them were really impressive. I did better with the Perseids back in August, but it was still fairly cool; I didn't feel like the trip had been wasted.
But the real winner of the evening was the fog:
The nearby glowing bits are the UC Berkeley campus. Then you can see the fog stretching out over the Bay to where radio towers poke up in San Francisco. You can see those better in this larger version, along with some stars. It's quite a view during the day, but there was something really cool about seeing it all at night, shrouded in fog.
For some unrelated photographic goodness, I refer you to anzubird's photos of our trip to the San Diego Zoo. Sadly, my camera died the day before, so I don't have my own photos to share. But there's some great ones in here, especially the lynx.