Robert Dempster

Resident in Pietermaritzburg (PMB)!

View myPMB's current weather status Includes readings for the past week

Follow the I Love South African link to watch Galen Schultz's feel good video --- Just do it!
Follow the South African flag link to get to the South African info site

On 10th December 2020 I published a blog covering the time Edith and I spent at Lemonwood Cottages in the Dargle Valley. The last photograph in the sequence of photographs that feature in that blog is of a sunset that was kinda special. Our position now here in the Ambers does not lend itself to spectacular sunsets. In fact the converse is true, here we have seen some special sunrises, and so this blog is in a sense dedicated to these sunrises and to one sunrise in particular.

On the morning of 13 February 2021 it was cloudless and so while I sat in the study glancing out of the window occasionally, I did not expect to see much of a sunrise. Then just before the sun started to rise, I noticed a bright blob in the sky just above the horizon. At first I thought it had to be a suspended dewdrop. When it stuck around I thought I best venture onto the porch to take a look. It was very definitely some shiny object out in the big blue yonder and I had no idea st to what it was. A couple of minutes passed, the sun appeared, and the distant bright blob was gone.

Then it occurred to me that I should use my Star Gazer app to see whether there was possibly something out there. Well I could not have been more surprised, The moon, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto were all contributing to the blob of light I had seen. It was a very special moment, much of it made available to me by the wonder of the world we live in, and the achievements of People Kind, not least of all the humble cell phone, the instrument that made it all happen.

The remaining photographs highlight other magnificent sunrises and some of the other wonderful sights we have seen during our stay on the edge of the Zoo.

This page is best viewed on a computer (desktop/laptop) using a browser together with a mouse or pointing device.
Getting it to work on a device that has a touch-screen is a problem that I still have to solve.
To view a larger image, click on a thumb-nail. Click anywhere within the browser context in order to remove it.
Starred thumbnails have an accompanying comment that pops up and remains up, while the mouse pointer is over the thumb-nail.

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Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy a bicycle.

Some links

• The Planets Today - 15 February 2021
• Earth Space Lab.com - Gravity, the planets and the tides
• Cool Cosmos - What is Earth's location in space?
• Corona College - How big is the sun?
• Amber Valley - Where we are now

If you have any comments, corrections, suggestions or plain criticism, I would appreciate it if you would communicate the same to me.

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www.robdempster.com