The Greenpoint Blues
We're losing our sky here in this part of Brooklyn. Large buildings are going up everywhere in Greenpoint and in neighboring Williamsburg. Look at this picture of two buildings under construction right in front of our kitchen windows:
That's directly west -- where I've taken lots of photos of sunsets, new moons, and conjunctions.
I don't really know how much my astronomy will be effected by this. Much depends on how high these twins go. But it does stick in the craw.
This makes me want to go back to the Southwest -- where Dess and I took our honeymoon -- more than ever. I remember a lot of flat horizons there. Already there's only so much I can do with the telescope here. I can climb up the fire escape to the roof with a camera, but not with anything heavy like a telescope. Except on occasional trips to friends' houses, the scope has to stay on our fire escape, where I sometimes get some nice photos -- but always photos of the same hemisphere of the sky, the western half.
Urban astronomy is something unique, however, that I could never really regret. And now that these twins are going up, I will appreciate any photos I take in the west that much more. I just wish I didn't have to take photos of tall buildings blotting out the vistas that this neighborhood once enjoyed.
That's directly west -- where I've taken lots of photos of sunsets, new moons, and conjunctions.
I don't really know how much my astronomy will be effected by this. Much depends on how high these twins go. But it does stick in the craw.
This makes me want to go back to the Southwest -- where Dess and I took our honeymoon -- more than ever. I remember a lot of flat horizons there. Already there's only so much I can do with the telescope here. I can climb up the fire escape to the roof with a camera, but not with anything heavy like a telescope. Except on occasional trips to friends' houses, the scope has to stay on our fire escape, where I sometimes get some nice photos -- but always photos of the same hemisphere of the sky, the western half.
Urban astronomy is something unique, however, that I could never really regret. And now that these twins are going up, I will appreciate any photos I take in the west that much more. I just wish I didn't have to take photos of tall buildings blotting out the vistas that this neighborhood once enjoyed.
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