Venus, Jupiter and the Moon

The three brightest objects in the night sky, together for a close encounter Sunday, as seen from Gold Canyon, Arizona:





Venus is the brighter one, closer to the Moon. In the first photo, you can also see some airplanes taking off from Sky Harbor Airport.

Here's another shot of the heavenly trio -- you may need to squint in order to spot Jupiter, directly above Venus -- roughly 24 hours earlier, as seen from inside the Los Angeles Coliseum during Saturday's USC-Notre Dame game:



You can more easily see Jupiter in the larger version of that same picture. You can't quite make it out in this wider view, which also shows the Irish and Trojans lining up for a play. But trust me, it's there!

Yet another 24 hours earlier, here's a shot of just Venus and Jupiter (no Moon), as seen from Palm Desert, California, during our drive from Phoenix to L.A.:



The three heavenly bodies will make their closest approach to one another after sunset Monday. Definitely worth a look.

UPDATE: The climax!

No silent prayer for the faith-departed

The Band of the Fighting Irish, making its first-ever visit to the Los Angeles Coliseum, spells out "BON JOVI" while playing "It's My Life" during halftime of Saturday's USC-Notre Dame game:



The lyrics of "It's My Life" declare that it "ain't a song for the broken-hearted" -- but with the Irish putting forward an utterly inept offensive effort that put an exclamation point on two consecutive horrible seasons, that's debatable at best.

Smog, glorious smog

Anyone who's driven to California from Arizona will, I think, recognize this view: it's the moment when the smog cloud of Indio announces that you've left behind the near-emptiness of the desert, and re-entered civilization.



Speaking of the desert, here's a shot from about an hour earlier, showing one of the Mordor-ish mountains that lines I-10 in southeastern California as it passes through the Mojave Desert:



They're seriously a bit spooky. As Eomer says in the Return of the King, "Those mountains are evil."

Who?

The owl statue on Ted and Ginny's back porch:

Another fiery Denver sunset

I took this photo out my car window while driving home from work on Tuesday:

The Superstitions

Clouds and sunlight interact this evening in Superstition Mountain, Arizona:





And a bit earlier, when it was raining over the mountain:

The view from our window

Sunday, November 16, at 6:43 AM:


Later that day, at 4:53 PM:


(See also here.) And, ten minutes later, at 5:03 PM:

The mirror of Galadriel

Actually, it's just a pool of water at the UT Gardens in Knoxville, back in September. (I'm finally starting to sort through some of my photos from the busy last two months.)

Post-election pics

I saw this car in a mall parking garage on Thursday:



Heh. A bit bitter, are we?

Meanwhile, even the cut-rate liquor stores were urging people to get out the vote:



Again, here's my full Election 2008 photoset on Flickr.

Election 2008

I've been posting a bunch of election-related photos -- from both Tennessee and Colorado -- in my Election 2008 Flickr gallery. The gallery goes all the way back to January, and continues through today's Obama rally in Pueblo (where I took the picture above).

Needless to say, I'll be taking and uploading more election-related photos over the next few days.