I was down at the rifle range at McLean Bottoms, trying out a new rifle. I’ve got several friends that have bought guns in the past week or so as well, it’s like we’re contagious or something! But this was just a solo trip down to the range after work to run two ceremonial rounds through it, one through each of the magazines issued with the rifle. The ammo was a gift from a friend, who turned our Sioux Hockey Night into an impromptu “gun-warming party” as he put it. I’m honored. Oh yeah, while I was in the area I stopped at the pistol range as well and heated up my Glock for good measure.

Back to the sundogs in the photo. The reason they’re somewhat “dirty” and that there’s a yellowish tinge to the horizon is that there was a pretty large grass fire underway north of Highway 1804. I saw it as I worked my way down to the river bottoms. It was throwing up a pretty good cloud of dirty looking smoke, which happened to drift right across the sky above and west of the pistol/rifle ranges. All in all, it was an eventful little after-work trip!

The moon rises in the northeast nowadays, and it looks absolutely enormous as it crests the horizon. Keep an eye out for it tonight!

It was a very difficult thing to do, catching a pinpoint as it creeped across the sky, because the sun was starting to rise in the east. The sky was so bright, holding the shutter open long enough to capture the pinpoint of light as a streaking trail left the rest of the photo horribly overexposed. My solution: perform a series of quicker exposures back to back. That left a trail of dashes across the screen once I combined all of the exposures into one, so I filled in the gaps in Photoshop. I wish I could have captured what you see above entirely in the camera, but the fact that the flyby occurred at Sunrise forced my hand. Perhaps I’ll give it another attempt when it flies by in the dark!

I try to keep an eye on the sky…for instance, I took some photos of tonight’s wispy clouds at sunset. But I don’t care to bore people with post after post of sunrises and sunsets. When I see something a little more unique, though, such as these iridescent clouds, I post ’em.

I still say North Dakota has the most beautiful skies, and I’m sure many of my friends and readers who are no longer in North Dakota will agree with me.

The neat thing about the sky at this particular time is that the clouds look like they’re going around the cross, like when you put your hand in running water or something similar. It was a pretty cool catch!

After a long nap to tame a migraine Tuesday night, I awoke with just enough time to bolt for high ground and see what the sky was doing. There was a pretty strong haze in the sky, and I think I know why. My home town of Missoula, Montana is a battleground against many forest fires right now, as is the Glacier National Park area. The winds coming out of the north cleared most of it up around here, however. Yet there was still a visible haze when I first checked the sky.

I think we can expect some pretty wild sunsets as long as the forest fires keep throwing stuff into the sky. Keep an eye out for some amazing colors the next several days!