April 24th of this year featured a nice lineup of the naked-eye visible planets in the morning sky. Four planets, Jupiter, Venus, Mars, and Saturn were all lined up in the eastern sky. I got up early — 5:15am — to get some pictures. There was already some twilight in the sky, illuminating some faint clouds above the mountains. Please click on the picture to see it at full-size.

Here is the same image with the planets annotated.

Since I was up early, I watched the sunrise. It was nice to watch the slowly changing light with the Sun finally bursting over the horizon.

One of our two remaining cottonwood trees has a nice big hawk’s nest in it. And the nest is in use!

The hawk wasn’t to pleased having us around. It has the place mostly to itself, so when we were walking around the yard it would circle overhead a screech at us. It is a really beautiful bird.

The nest is pretty impressive too. Quite a large construction.