PrettyTiny Film Company Pic A Week *2019* (#.....52!! Dec. 24)

[Alliecat]

Thanks very much, everyone!  
It was the closest I could get, with her limited articulation, to the "warrior pose".  Figures, I guess, that this is the pose that worked best for little samurai girl.  She's wearing PJs with little yoga people on them -- very appropriate!





"OK, you guys, which of these knobs will make the clouds go away...?"

This was today's attempt to see the transit of Mercury  -- taken after the clouds really socked in.   Like every other major astronomical event in the past 15 years or so, it was cloudy.  (And this time, there was no way around that, like that time I drove around for miles looking for a hole in the fog for a 30-second glimpse of the Venus transit.)  Auwe!!!  I spent more time trying to find the sun through the solar filter than actually LOOKING at it.... but I did get some glimpses through thinner cloud, so I can say I have now seen Mercury for the first time.  There's something different about seeing the shadow and shape of a planet as opposed to a night-time sparkle that just looks like another star.  You get a sense of the distance, a 3D sort of effect, that there is that great big ball of sun, and there's this tiny dot in front of it, and it's a whole planet, and even at the speed everything's going, it's still going to take it 5 hours to cross...  Not as dramatic as our solar eclipse trip, but it's like a peek at the clockwork mechanism of the cosmos.  It being a one-chance-to-see opportunity, I'm very happy to have had at least a glimpse.  Although a sunny day would've been nice.
Also, it was freezing, and Sunsette, Scarlett & Miki all took spectacular stunt falls off the scope.  Terrifying
Everyone appears to have survived.