Dave
@astronomydave.bsky.social
840 followers 180 following 2.1K posts
I share photos, mostly of nature/night sky. I play guitar, bass & keyboards for fun; I share videos sometimes. Reconstructing a small prairie space. I garden a bit. I vet anyone I follow. I used to have a pretty big YouTube channel.
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astronomydave.bsky.social
Often, yes. And cotton socks are the worst, of course. 😂
astronomydave.bsky.social
For me, that's year round.... 🤪
astronomydave.bsky.social
Thank you - I got lucky capturing them. The sky and camera both cooperated.
astronomydave.bsky.social
A sky like this can be difficult to capture the way I see it. But in this case, this is almost exactly how it looked.
A dusk scene. The horizon is black. There are some wind turbines and trees along the horizon. A deep orange fades slowly into a lighter orange upward, then turns light blue into a deeper blue at the top.
astronomydave.bsky.social
I was driving from the new house to the soon to be old house yesterday when there appeared to be clouds on the horizon. But....not really clouds.

It was smoke, from fires in cornfields. 😕😕😕
An empty field in the foreground. There is a long line of smoke in the horizon below a blue sky.
astronomydave.bsky.social
Probably. But it was by my back door. And was posing so nicely!
astronomydave.bsky.social
I wrote "staring." Not "tearing."
astronomydave.bsky.social
This praying mantis was tearing at me HARD.

Smaller though, so perhaps a male...? Also very green, so I don't think this one is really native, but I may be wrong on that.
The head of a praying mantis, the eyes looking towards the camera. Full body of the same praying mantis.
astronomydave.bsky.social
Me, in my head: "I just put that new furnace filter in a couple weeks ago, right? Because I change it every 3 weeks (3 cats + 3 dogs = lots in the filter). I'll check what date I wrote on it then."

Date I wrote on it: 8/15

Me: "Oops! Better change that...."
astronomydave.bsky.social
I have not knocked myself out yet.

But that idea has merit.... 🤪🤪🤪😂😂
astronomydave.bsky.social
Ugh. Still so frustrating at the moment. Doing literally everything possible on my side to get this done.
astronomydave.bsky.social
That's a win. 🙂👍
astronomydave.bsky.social
Your Friday morning Zen.
An image of a rural area at sunrise. The foreground shows a darkly lit road at left narrowing into the distance. At the horizon in the center is a far off building, likely a barn and another one to its right hidden partly by morning fog. The sky is warm and orange at the horizon and then slowly fades to a pale bluish-grey at the top. The scene is peaceful and serene.
astronomydave.bsky.social
Yay!! Great to read!
astronomydave.bsky.social
Thank you!!

How's your print search going? Any luck with getting that sorted out and finding the right company and prints?(I hope I'm asking that the right way!)
astronomydave.bsky.social
Oh, I've been on them when I felt it was warranted. Today I will be bugging the heck out of them.
astronomydave.bsky.social
I really hope that isn't the case for me. This particular bank has been good for me in the past (and I'm normally no fan of banks). So this has been extraordinarily frustrating. Got my fingers crossed I'm good to go by today....
astronomydave.bsky.social
I hope so too. I have given them every bit of information they r asked within hours....then they take days to decide "Oh, we need more!" And now it's down to the very end and no time left. Just hoping it's all done and good to go at this point.
astronomydave.bsky.social
I love that I started the mortgage process literally the day after I made an offer on a house, and yet here I am 3.5 WEEKS LATER and they STILL are asking me for more details.

Like, you couldn't have asked for those things, oh, I don't know - NOT 3 hours before the last possible day to approve???
Reposted by Dave
mariannedenton.bsky.social
On the cusp of dawn, Orion still shines.

Yesterday morning from The Denton Observatory
🔭 #Astrophotography
The great Orion Nebula through an Astrophotography telescope. 

From Wikipedia:

The Orion Nebula (also known as Messier 42, M42, or NGC 1976) is a diffuse nebula in the Milky Way situated south of Orion's Belt in the constellation of Orion, and is known as the middle "star" in the "sword" of Orion. It is one of the brightest nebulae and is visible to the naked eye in the night sky with an apparent magnitude of 4.0. It is 1,344 ± 20 light-years (412.1 ± 6.1 pc) away and is the closest region of massive star formation to Earth. M42 is estimated to be 25 light-years across (so its apparent size from Earth is approximately 1 degree). It has a mass of about 2,000 times that of the Sun. Older texts frequently refer to the Orion Nebula as the Great Nebula in Orion or the Great Orion Nebula.

Observers have long noted a distinctive greenish tint to the nebula, in addition to regions of red and of blue-violet. The red hue is a result of the Hα recombination line radiation at a wavelength of 656.3 nm. The blue-violet coloration is the reflected radiation from the massive O-class stars at the core of the nebula.
Reposted by Dave
mariannedenton.bsky.social
C/2025 A6 (Lemmon)

Coming to naked eye visibility in mid-October.

(little hick-up in the Seestar tracking stretched the coma/nucleus)

🔭 #Astrophotography
C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) is a non-periodic comet discovered by the Mount Lemmon Survey 

The coma is greenish. There is a yellow star close to the tail. Lots of stars in the background