The weather has been inclement and overcast for weeks now, with only a few clear nights. It’s been so long that I have had trouble getting my telescope set up. Here’s an image I call “The Skull”. Really the Rosette Nebula, but this view, to me, looks like a distorted skull gazing wistfully off and up to the right.
Many years ago I was on a rafting trip through the Grand Canyon. Floating through the Inner Gorge you can see Vishnu Schist worn by the water into beautiful fluted black walls. But I, in a grim mood, thought of that schist as the tortured souls of the damned, souls that had been sent back in time (God could do that, right?), buried miles deep and burned for eons by the molten interior of the Earth, crushed and twisted beyond all recognition and buried for millions of years until they were for a brief instant exposed to the sun and air and water, so I could see them as I floated by.
Anyway, the Skull Nebula.