Monday Meme: My Official Status

Night Sky Photography -- 01-01-2026 -- The Full Wolf Moon & Jupiter

 

Good evening fellow stargazers!

The first Full Moon of the year 2026 -- the Full Wolf Moon here in North America -- is also the first supermoon of the year. Our beautiful Luna was at her perigee (the Moon's closest point to Earth in its orbit)  at 225,130 miles (362,312 kilometers) away, making it appear significantly larger and brighter than usual.

In the evening sky it rose in the east along with Jupiter, the largest planet in our Solar System. Jupiter is also really close to Earth in its orbit around the Sun. The large planet will reach its closest point for the year on Friday, January 9th, when it reaches opposition (when Earth passes between Jupiter and the Sun) will be about 393 million miles (633 million km) away, making it exceptionally bright and visible pretty much all month long. 

Jupiter is very close in the night sky to the twin stars Pollux and Castor in the Constellation Gemini the Twins and will continue to be throughout the month of January.

The following are the photos I took on the evening of January 3rd of the meeting between all of these heavenly bodies....including capturing three of Jupiter's moons: Europa, Callisto, and Ganymede just visible in the photographs. These include closeups of the Full Wolf Supermoon, and a lovely shot through the trees with my U.S. Flag in the foreground.

First Moonrise of the New Year!

A beautiful photo I took of the first moonrise of 2026 just above the tops of the bare trees in the first late afternoon of New Year's Day here in South Carolina.  

On Saturday, January 3rd, the first Full Moon -- also known as the Full Wolf Moon here in North America -- will be a large and beautiful supermoon that will appear near the planet Jupiter and the two brightest stars of the Constellation Gemini the Twins: Pollux and Castor in the night sky. I'm hopeful that, God and good skies willing, to be able to capture a shot of the event tomorrow evening.

Night Sky Photography -- 01-01-2026 -- Bright Winter Stars & First Moonrise Of The New Year!

Greetings & Happy New Year 2026 Y'all!

Like many folks across this wonderful world of ours, I stayed up to celebrate the New Year by counting down to midnight (12 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, or EST) here in my home state of South Carolina on the United States eastern coast in North America.

After watching my neighborhood turn into a fireworks war zone for about half an hour (and in truth they continued to pop off sporadically until well after 1 a.m.) my eyes turned to the beautifully clear night sky dome overhead to see the beautiful bright stars of the Hyades Star Cluster which makes up the "horns" of the Constellation Taurus The Bull, the beautiful stars of the Constellation Orion The Hunter, and the smaller Winter Triangle asterisms -- along with a beautiful Waxing Full Moon and the planet Jupiter overhead.

I captured a good shot of all these from my front yard to share with y'all.

This is the first of what I hope will be many more night sky photographs I'll be presenting to y'all this year....God and clear skies permitting, of course.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year & Resolutions For 2026

Greetings & Salutations, Y'all!

Welcome to the year 2026 A.D. here at Southern Fried Common Sense & Stuff.

Now that this blog site has recently passed the impressive one million worldwide views, your favorite blogger has resolved to bring y'all even more outstanding content. This is my resolution for the upcoming year.

Being an American -- more specifically a United States citizen -- this year will hold a great deal of significance as the 250th anniversary of my nation's independence.

My home state of South Carolina was one of the original 13 former British North American colonies to secede and declare independence from the British Empire in 1776. As such South Carolina had a major role in the history and heritage of that struggle, which this blogger has spoken about before in previous posts and will continue to talk about over the course of this year.

This year, your favorite blogger will be posting much of the same content that you've come to know and apparently love; but with this year's theme in particular being personal nostalgia.

This year also holds a particular significance in terms of milestones for me personally. In June of this year, your favorite blogger will officially reach the 50th year on the journey that is my life -- and about 10 years left before I officially count myself as middle aged, LOL!

Looking back over my life I've some rather nostalgic memories and personal stories about other milestones in my life that I'm planning to share over the course of this year. These will include likely some important (and I confess rather embarrassing) stories from my more formative days in my struggles to become the pseudo-adult that I am today. Hopefully y'all should find some of them entertaining....perhaps more so than I myself did when I went through them at the time. 

Childhood nostalgia will also play a role in some of my blog posts for 2026; including more Southern Fried Nostalgia & Fandom reviews -- perhaps as many as one per month if I'm able to do so.

Finally, I'm hopeful to be able to provide some travel photos and nature photojournalism for you to enjoy this year, along with Southern heritage and identity posts that I believe at most of y'all will love.

Here's to the new year and hopefully even an even better year than the previous one. God bless everyone across this world of ours and y'all come back now, ya hear!