Astronomical Phenomena

One thing I love about my home is star-gazing.  Not the kind of stars you see in L.A. or NYC.  Real stars.  I can see the Little Dipper on a regular basis and sometimes the Big Dipper.  

That's about as advanced as my knowledge of constellations goes.  I was walking Bear outside in my neighborhood on the night before he went into 

acute kidney failure, and we saw  a shooting star.  I've never seen an actual shooting star before.  

It was pretty amazing.  Not really like this picture; it kind of twinkles like fireworks.   After seeing it, I had a sense that everything would be OK.  And a couple of weeks later, after a very large vet bill, Bear turned out OK and I landed a new job.

Last night we saw the crescent moon, Venus, and Jupiter combo.  That was really amazing.  The planets looked like they were Christmas lights on our neighbor's house.  To look up and see planets so close (well, relatively speaking) is mesmerizing.  I tried to take a picture, but this is the best shot (the crescent moon is in the upper left hand corner, then the lower dot is Venus and the dot to the right and slightly higher is Jupiter) (and click on the picture to make it bigger):

 Bear, however, was less enthralled.

He doesn't get bogged down by astronomical happenings.  He just wants a cozy spot to sleep.