After seeing the brilliant rainbow colors in the clouds near the sun, I went to get my camera and get some pictures. In this image, it appears that there is an object that resembles a planet or something near the sun. It actually is a phantom image of the overexposed sun, itself, caused by the camera lens optics. It is interesting and pretty, don’t you think? Click on the image to enlarge.
Since we have a smallish house, we won’t be putting up a massive Christmas tree as we did in the old house. Instead, we have a little tabletop tree with lights and ornaments miniaturized. I always like to bring out a couple of my cute little troll dolls to add to the festive mood. Click on the image to enlarge.
Tax season is here again, at least in our household. I had been waiting for our tax software provider to notify us of the availability of the product for the 2013 tax year. Today, the offer was in the mail. Not hesitating, I downloaded the software, installed it and dove right in to start putting in our 2013 data.
In a matter of less than an hour, I had most of the updated figures plugged into the program. We have a pretty similar tax situation to that of our 2012 return, so most things were already imported from last year by the software. A few tweaks here and there gave us a pretty good idea of where we will be when we finally file in early February.
Of course, the IRS will be modifying things until the December 31 deadline and probably beyond then knowing how efficient the .gov is. Meanwhile, we can pour over the figures we know about and look for some shortcuts to maximize our refund.
This three-panel slideshow contains amateur photographs of some of the things we have seen in the sky over the last few days. The first and second panels show “sun dogs” and the last panel shows a circumhelical arc, all of which are rainbow-colored patches of refracted sunlight through ice crystals high in the Earth’s atmosphere. I used my hand to block out the direct sunlight in the last panel.
Damsel caught a beautiful photo of the sun and optics about a year ago. Click on the images to advance the slideshow.
Since the rain last week, we have been having the most lovely fall weather. I took this panoramic photo of the mountains northeast of town yesterday afternoon. The clear skies and mild temperatures made for a beautiful fall day. Click on the image to enlarge.
Finally, after several days of overcast and rainy weather, we have a cloudless Arizona sky. While we were walking the dogs this morning, I took this photo of the neighbor’s flagpole with the third quarter moon above.
The forecast is for continued sunshine and cooler temperatures with highs typically mid-sixties and lows in the low forties. You can see from the flag that the winds are light and variable. Click on the image to enlarge.