Lately I have aquired a pair of binocs (10 x 50 from Orion) and was
practicing some astro-viewing with them. So I was in my backyard last
Thursday, staring at Auriga, trying to see if I could identify any of
the Messier open clusters there, when suddenly a large, amorphous,
shape-shifting blob wandered into the field of view. I dropped the
binocs to look up, but didn't see anything odd with the naked eye.
Looking through the binocs again, I could see that it was a large
flock of birds (perhaps pigeons; it was hard to tell, maybe geese if
they were far enough away), dimly illuminated from below by the light
wash of the city. I followed it across the sky until it crossed the
rich star field of Perseus, which was nice because that was a pretty
sight. Thanks, birds!

Nick

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Nick Theodorakis

nicholas_theodorakis [at] urmc [dot] rochester [dot] edu