My Excellent Trip To HeroesCon 2023

On Friday, June 16th, your favorite blogger took to the road once again, traveling north across the North Carolina State Line to the Queen City (Charlotte, NC) to attend HeroesCon 2023 at the Charlotte Convention Center.

As I've explained in previous blog posts about this event, HeroesCon is an annual event that includes comic and graphic novel artists and writers from across the country. The event draws tens of thousands of comics fans, cosplayers, and hobbyists each year over a three-day weekend in June.

The main focus is, of course, comics and graphic novels. From classic stories to more modern-day heroes, comics and artwork are traded and sold, and highly sought out autographs from well-known comics artists can be had at this event.

I went on the first day of the event and stayed for about four hours where I got a few autographs and added some more artwork and graphic novels to my ever-expanding personal library.

The following are the photos I took from the event, including some of the best cosplayers I really loved.

The Charlotte Convention Center, Charlotte, North Carolina.

Groot cosplayer from Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy greeting
people at the entrance.

Merida cosplayer from Pixar's Brave.

Two Spidermen and Nurse Joker cosplayers.

Who ya gonna call? This guy!

Young Ashoka Tano & Mandalorian Din Djaran cosplayers
from the Star Wars franchise.

A "friendly" group of Klingon cosplayers.

Miss Piggy cosplayer in karate uniform with Kermit.

My favorite cosplayer of the event, The Baroness from
G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero -- one of my favorite 80s cartoons.

Well everyone, I hope y'all enjoyed my photos from my travels across my little corner of Dixie. My personal thanks to the organizers of this annual event, and espectially to all the comic artists, vendors, and cosplayers for making this event worth attending for everyone.

Night Sky Photography -- 06-12/13-2023 -- Venus & Mars with the Constellation Cancer & The Beehive Star Cluster

Good evening, fellow stargazers!

At the end of the previous month and the beginning of this month, the small red planet, Mars, traveled past the Beehive Star Cluster as it rises higher in the sky as seen here from the surface of the Earth in its larger orbit around the Sun.

Meanwhile, the bright planet Venus, in its own closer orbit of the Sun, has reached the Beehive Cluster and the Constellation Cancer the Crab stars this week on Monday, June 12th and Tuesday, June 13th respectively.

Both of our nearest planetary neighbors are moving higher towards the bright star, Regulus, and will move closer together over the course of the month of June; both Venus and Mars finally meeting in conjunction at the beginning of July.

As I've mentioned before, the Beehive Star Cluster (also known as M-44) is a faint open cluster of hundreds of stars located an estimated 577 light-years (or 176.9 parsecs) from our Sun. The cluster is located inside the faint zodiac Constellation Cancer The Crab.

The following are the photos I took of the planets Mars and Venus in the night sky with the faint Constellation Cancer with bright Venus buzzing by the Beehive.

When Venus and Mars reach conjunction on Sunday, July 2, 2023, they will appear about 5 degrees apart in the evening sky in the west. They will continue to move closer throughout the month of July.