Brigantine Island, New Jersey - Sept. 2006

Here are pictures I took with a digital camera while on vacation recently. I still prefer my Canon 35mm.

Anticrepuscular Rays Over Florida

Credit & Copyright: Daniel Herron

Explanation: What's happening over the horizon? Although the scene may appear somehow supernatural, nothing more unusual is occurring than a setting Sun and some well placed clouds. Strangely, the actual sunset was occurring in the opposite direction from where the camera was pointing. Pictured above are anticrepuscular rays. To understand them, start by picturing common crepuscular rays that are seen any time that sunlight pours though scattered clouds. Now although sunlight indeed travels along straight lines, the projections of these lines onto the spherical sky are great circles. Therefore, the crepuscular rays from a setting (or rising) sun will appear to re-converge on the other side of the sky. At the anti-solar point 180 degrees around from the Sun, they are referred to as anticrepuscular rays. While enjoying the sunset after visiting NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the photographer chanced to find that an even more spectacular sight was occurring in the other direction just over the Atlantic Ocean -- a particularly vivid set of anticrepuscular rays.

Happy Birthday to Me!

~ Getting Older ~

You look in the mirror
Hoping for youth
But the face that looks back
tells you the truth.
There’s wrinkles above
And wrinkles below,
There’s sag and bags
And hair white as snow.
But then you remember
Why they are there:
It was learning to raise
your children with care.
Sitting up nights
When the babies were ill
Stoking the fire
To keep off the chill.
Waiting up late
To see them come home
From the first time they drove
The car on their own.
Cheering at ball games
Sitting out in the sun
Losing your voice
when the home team won.
I know you'd not trade

What you've had in your life
For your blessings are many;
You've learned from the strife.
Wisdom and age
Oft go hand in hand
and we all know that soon
we'll run out of sand.
No tipping the glass
will bring back the past
but I know you'll treasure

this life while it lasts.

Tribute in Light

(AFP/Stan Honda)

The "Tribute in Light" display representing the twin towers of the World Trade Center is beamed above lower Manhattan from Ground Zero in New York marking the fifth anniversary of the 11 September 2001 attacks.

Split Moon

REUTERS/Aly Song (CHINA)
A full moon shines over the minarets
of a building in Shanghai

Red works

(AFP/Sanka Vidanagama)

Fireworks explode during the closing ceremony of 10th South Asian Games at the Sugathadasa Stadium in Colombo.

Newborn albino Pygmy Marmoset monkeys

REUTERS/Froso Zoo/Handout (SWEDEN)

Rare newborn albino Pygmy Marmoset monkeys perch on a zookeeper's fingers at Froso Zoo in Ostersund, Sweden August 22, 2006. The Pygmy Marmoset, which lives in the upper Amazon basin in South America, is the world's smallest monkey and reaches 35 cm (13.7 inches) in length and weighs up to 100 grams (3.5 ounces) at maturity.