Convenient access to instant machine translation.

One of the most important features for G+, for me, is the convenient access to instant machine translation. It allows me to follow people from all over the world, and at least have a semblance of understanding what they are saying. This won’t be easy to replace.

Ray Davies

Over the years I’ve collected many CDs — several hundred. I’d forgotten about this one, until this song popped up in a playlist.

Center of the Milky Way

The first image is of Sagittarius, slightly cropped to put the center of the Milky Way galaxy at dead center in the photo. If you work at it, you can make out the teapot of Sagittarius. This was a thirty-second exposure; note the airplane entering from the left.

The second image is a tighter crop showing the airplane track, with the two wingtip lights flashing every couple of seconds.

A thirty second exposure is long enough for star trails to just begin to show, which is why all the stars look like parallel peanuts.