Sometimes things get a little unreal when doing
urban astronomy. The juxtaposition between observing the natural world in the form of the night sky above from the deck of a crowded, noisy and light polluted urban world below is sometimes a bit unsettling. The other night I encountered one of my most extreme examples of this. I was observing to the south and trying to frame my favorite summer open cluster, M7, in my
astronomy binocular. Unfortunately, this far north, M7 does not get too high in the sky, so my window of opportunity is rather narrow. I finally captured M7 in my
Nikon 10x70, but the southern most tip of this glorious open star cluster was hidden by the roof of a neighboring apartment building. Wouldn't have been too bad if it had only been the roof. Unfortunately, I also picked up some guy in a white t-shirt, holding a beer, staring out his apartment window at the same time. So one of Nature's grandest spectacles and one of humanity's less than spectacular images, all in the same binocular
field of view. Not exactly magazine cover stuff.