Charting the Unknown: An Observationalist’s Log

A little Sparrow with a crumb of bread for breakfast.  This is the first photo I'm posting with my new Canon R8 camera. 

  Apollo 11 didn’t lack insight — but it only succeeded when the right action was chosen.   “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind” — Most people are familiar with these words, but how many people know that Neil Armstrong was only seconds away from saying “ We didn’t land on the Moon because the computer kept rebooting” ? Apollo 11’s Eagle Lunar Module, in flight Minutes before the planned moment of the first landing, Apollo 11 was skimming the lunar surface at over 1,300 kilometers per hour. The astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were concentrating on flying their strange-looking lunar lander and making sure they weren’t running out of fuel. The last thing they needed was the computer flashing esoteric error messages on the LED screen. But at a critical juncture, the primitive dashboard on their onboard computer started raising an alarm. Not a single alarm, many. While the astronauts continued flying, the engineers at Houston Mission Contro...

 A Glossy Ibis ( Plegadis falcinellus / מגלן חום ) collecting sticks for the family nest - and what a stick it's found!

A Black-Crowned Night Heron ( Nycticorax nycticorax  אנפת לילה) hanging out in Ramat Gan's National Park.