What a great photograph.

From Astronomy Picture of the Day for 25/7/20.

This is a Long March 5 heavy-lift rocket after taking off with its Tianwen-1 mission payload to Mars.

It looks like it’s hanging in mid-air.

Next stop after St Petersburg was Helsinki, capital of Finland.

A lot of the buidings in the city centre are in the Art Nouveau style. These are the ones I photographed on the way to the Sibelius Monument.

The one in the centre here shades into Art Deco in the windows:-

Note the giraffe figures on the balcony here:-

I have absolutely no idea what these were about:-

For some reason St Petersburg has not one, not two, but three submarine museums. (I never saw the last of those, the Submarine Fleet Museum, but passed the first two when travelling into and out of the city by coach.)

Submarine C189. (In English this is submarine S189):-

Narodovolets D-2 Submarine:-

The good lady is a keen gardener and when she heard that the Japanese Garden, at Cowden, Clackmannanshire was reopening after being a long time overgrown, we had to visit. The garden was first opened in 1908, but was closed to the public in 1955 and left to go to ruin. Thankfully the recent restoration is restoring the garden to its former glory.

Japanese gardens are very elegant. Despite the refurbishment still going on Cowden certainly is. There is an air of peace and harmony about the place. Japanese bridges are especially elegant. The first bridge below is by the path near the garden’s entrance. The second spans the garden’s large pond:-

Pagoda and bridge:-

Zen garden:-

Bench:-

The burn which feeds the pond:-

Path to bridge:-

Stones and ornament with bridge in background:-

From the path to the park which contains Brechin’s War Memorial there is a good view of the reverse of the beech hedge which forms the western boundary of Glebe Park. You can also see the David Will Stand in this photo:-

The following two photos were taken of Sons new strip for 2018-19 (now superseded again) at the game on 25/8/18, a game we should have won.

Last summer we were in Dundee and when walking past the Railway Station I spotted this platform sign. It has ‘Dundee’ in both English and Gaelic. I couldn’t tell you when Gaelic was last spoken in Dundee on a daily basis.

On coming back the other way I noticed that above the entrance to the station the sign has the Gaelic phrase, “Faìlte gu stèisean Dùn Deagh,” under the English, “Welcome to Dundee Station.”

My knowledge of Gaelic is not even hazy so is there a reason for there to be two spellings of ‘Dundee’ in Gaelic, Dùn Dè on the platform, Dùn Deagh on the entrance? Or do they just make it up as they go along?

There was an exhibition from the archives of the Dundee Publisher D C Thomson at Dundee’s McManus Galleries on at the time. D C Thomson were/are publishers of the comics The Beezer, The Topper, The Beano and The Dandy as well as Dundee based newspaper The Courier plus The Sunday Post – which gave us Oor Wullie and The Broons. The gallery was temporarily renamed The McMenace in tribute to The Dandy‘s denizen Dennis the Menace.

Dundee is proud of the D C Thomson legacy. There is a statue of Desperate Dan and his dog in the city centre.

One of the exhibits was this montage of comic characters set against the backdrop of the Galleries:-

D C Thomson’s offices overlooked the playground of Dundee High School. The writers and drawers of The Bash Street Kids apprently took inspiration from the goings-on there!

Comic characters and Dundee High School:-

It’s amazing what you see when wandering about a town on an early summer’s evening.

A train track in someone’s garden.

Unfortunately I couldn’t get far enough back to get it all in one photo:-

This was one of two bookshops we found in Dingwall.

It has a great name.

Apart from the Carron Restaurant – see previous post – Stonehaven, via the medium of the Carron Fish Bar, formerly The Haven, is the birthplace of that Scottish culinary delicacy, the deep fried Mars Bar.

Weather phenomena can be very strange indeed.

I found this photograph on Astronomy Picture of the Day for 25/2/19 – which sprinkles the odd meteorological image amongst its astronomical ones.

The photograph shows red sprites – a form of lightning that was only recognised as such 30 years ago.

More information about atmospheric sprites can be found here.

Also on that page is an illustration of different atmospheric electrical phenomena which I reproduce below. These appear to take place at different heights abobe the ground. (Image credited to Abestrobi.)