Oh Boy, Dust!!!

With my heartfelt apologies to those of you who suffer from dust allergies (I know all about it because I'm a serious allergy sufferer too, but, I take shots and they work good!!), I love a dusty night. The last several mornings have been real hazy, and that makes for some real interesting effects. But, then again, the sun is up before I am, so I haven't gotten any shots of that. But, today we have had a lot of wind. And here in the desert, wind means dust. And dust means nice sunsets!!!

This first shot is as I was hurrying out into the desert to find my favorite cactus. There were just a few clouds in the West, and I just love it when they partially obscure the sun. This usually means rays and shadows in the sky. You can also tell from this that there really was a lot of dust in the air.



And then there is my cactus. The sun just looked like a big bright spot in the sky, not a crisp circle like it does most of the time. Plus, in the following shot, it is still partly behind the little cloud.



Zooming out a quite a bit reveals the nice purple color in the sky. As you can see, the sun still just looks like a big bright blur. I love the shadows in the sky that the clouds cast.



In this next shot, I like the big yellow spot that the sun is. You can tell that it is still just a big blur, due to the dust.



But, in this final shot, taken just two minutes later, something in the layer of the atmosphere changed, and the sun was once again the fine, crisp circle that it is supposed to be.



Of course, I took a lot more shots that I am showing here. After the shot above, I zoomed in real tight on the sun, and sure enough it has a nice crisp outline. Go figure.