Merry Christmas!

followed by the lunar eclipse at Winter Solstice (won't be another that high in our skies for 400 years). We stayed up to watch totality (around 2 a.m.). My pics are unimpressive, but here's a good one from the National Geographic site:
NationalGeographic image of 2010 Dec solstice eclipse

NationalGeographic image of 2010 Dec solstice eclipse

And a few days later, Christmas! Merry Christmas to all, from the happy crew of S/V Parallax! Here's Grant, showing great restraint by letting Mom take a picture before the present-opening begins!
Grant ready to open Christmas presents

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Vessel Name:	Parallax
Vessel Make/Model:	37' Prout Snowgoose (1982)
Hailing Port:	Pensacola
Crew:	Derek, Heather and Grant
About:	Two astronomers, looking for variable stars and adventure. After cruising the Caribbean aboard S/V Paradox for 18 months in the early 90s, the crew swallowed the anchor and had a child, always planning their next Great Adventure: cruising under sail with Grant, showing him the world. [...] More
Extra:	We knew that if we ever got a catamaran, we'd want a name to celebrate her twin-hulledness. Parallax is seeing the same thing from two slightly different points of view, which with our two eyes is what gives humans our depth perception. It's also a good metaphor for one of the benefits of marriage. [...] It is also one way astronomers find the distances to nearby stars -- only in that case, the baseline is not our eyes' separation, but the diameter of Earth's orbit! More