A surprise visitor of the celestial kind…

With a fresh dusting of snow on the ground and clear skies overhead, I could hardly wait to get out the door and into Estabrook Park this morning. My reward for being a bit early was catching a glimpse of planet Jupiter just before it set in the west and while the sky was still dark enough for me to see it.

I wondered if my camera would be able to capture it, and I was pleasantly surprised by what I got. The planet itself is the large disk in the middle, and I looked online to see which moon was which. From upper left to lower right, that’s Callisto, Europa, and Ganymede. Io has just started its transit of Jupiter, so we can’t see it. Not bad for a handheld 1/125th of a second exposure. If you do click the link above to check my work, remember to set the date to 01/02/2026 and the time to 13:00 UTC (7:00 am CST).

All right, on to the wildlife. The little birds at the pond were quite active this morning, and some even tolerated my gaze as they basked in the sun or foraged for breakfast. Here’s a white-throated sparrow.

Here’s one of those Oregon subspecies of the dark-eyed junco (Junco hyemalis oreganus) that are supposed to be rare here.

This white-breasted nuthatch must have been on quite a serious mission, because it refused to give me that fun pose they usually like to do.

The black-capped chickadees are starting to sing their songs, and here’s one mid-syllable.

Finally, at least one goldeneye hen is still on the river, and here she is floating amongst the ice and lit by the warm morning sun.

I see that the clouds are due to roll back in for tomorrow morning, so there won’t be much to see in the heavens, and you probably don’t have to worry about more astronomy pictures.