No sleep
I've not had much sleep in the last few days for a couple of reasons. On Sunday I went to bed quite late, then woke up two hours later. Normally, when I wake up, the first thing I do is peek through the curtains to see what the sky looks like. On this particular morning the sky happened to be clear and the atmosphere was quite still (for Manchester). When I pulled back the curtain I saw the constellation of Orion perfectly framed by the surrounding buildings.
You know the year is moving on when Orion starts to be visible again. Just like the bright stars of Cygnus, Lyra and Aquila (which define the Summer triangle) are prominant in the summer months, Orion dominates the sky throughout winter.
So, as I was wide awake by this point, I got out my little digital camera and took a few pictures. As my big tripod is at work (for use with the solar telescope), all I had was a tiny table-top tripod. The image on the left is a composite of two frames taken at about 5am with the camera balanced on the top of a box turned upside down on the end of my bed. The leaves in the foreground are the plants on the windowsill, and you can see the orange glow near the bottom of the image due to the streetlights of south Manchester.
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