Weather Roller Coaster!

I'm still at "Ketelsen East" in Illinois, and really enjoying the weather! Of course, it is February, so you never know what you are going to get, blizzards to Spring-like conditions, and we've actually seen it all the last few weeks. When I last posted, we were enjoying single digit temps (F) and below, and since then they set a record 9 consecutive days w/snow - a total of 18" in places! The map showed that amount very close to us, but seemed a little less outside. Still a massive amount! But while the last few Winters have been mild, we've got professionals here, and the roads get cleared pretty quickly. Picture at left show what the house looked like, and at right is a picnic table 30 yards from the house! It really was a winter wonderland, but difficult to walk in snow that deep! At least it was cold with all that snow and it was light and fluffy - perfect for shoveling!

Shortly after all that snow it cleared again and got cold - resulting in some really pretty sunsets! At right is one showing the deep snow reflecting violets and orange colors from the last of the twilight. The bluish color is from the blue of the clear sky illuminating the snow - it can also be seen in the shadows of the tree and picnic table above. With the sun shadowed, the predominant light is from the blue sky...






A few days later warmer temperatures came, highlighted by a day of temps pushing 70 (!) and 2" of rain! Even 14"+ of snow won't last long with that! Of course, all that snow plus 2 inches of rain totals something in excess of 3"+ of rain, so now all the rivers are flooded, the Fox River outside the house included! At left is shown the snow and a week later when it is all gone, with the river at least a little out of its banks. And at right I've done a before-and-after closer to the house, after I cleared the sidewalk around the house and now with all the snow gone.

It almost seems like an early spring with temps in the mid-30s, and now magically the Canada Geese have returned! They all disappeared somewhere when it was cold and snow-covered, but those that over-winter obviously have a hiding place and they are now out again to play!

Frosty Time!

I'm back at "Ketelsen East" in the western 'burbs of Chicago after a week-long road trip through the Midwest. It is great to stay in familiar surroundings, though has been a while since I've been in these weather conditions - temps in single digits and new snow falling most days! It has been beautiful, especially when combined with a blue sky, but what is one to do when confronted by temps near zero? Go out and shoot photos, of course!






I noticed the strange glow just looking out into the dark - the sky seemed aglow as what I assume were streetlights reflecting off the new snow. These photos of "Ketelsen East" and surroundings are only 5 seconds long, but you could easily see without a flashlight. There were a few snowflakes still coming down, and other than the "Grinch, Grinch" of my feet compacting the cold snow underfoot, it was completely silent. At left, I was shooting at the "security light" of the church camps pavilion on the grounds where my house is located. At right is a view of the Fox River, mostly frozen over with the snow cover over it making it look deceptively safe to cross on foot. While Melinda and I have crossed the frozen river before, it would have to be cold for much longer before I'd venture out onto the ice!




The next morning I awoke to an incredible frost display in the bathroom window between the inner pane and the outer storm window. I shot these with macro lens and some extension tube added in for good measure to record crystal detail. I shot it first with good reason - shortly afterwards, the sun hit it and it melted into a hazy patch of condensation and a few sizeable drops of water. No doubt the next evening a new pattern of frost would appear magically drawn by the randomness of crystal growth and moisture availability! Hmm - perhaps a time-lapse subject - but in a night-darkened bathroom???







As soon as I snapped the above shots in the bathroom, I looked outside on the porch (where it truly was nearly zero Fahrenheit!) and saw the sun glinting off some really nice snowflakes atop new snow fallen on the grill and bushes a few feet outside the door. The cold temps and still air from the night before must have been perfect conditions for crystal formation, as there were many choices to draw from. In particular, what had initially caught my eye was the near-specular reflection of the sun off the large flakes, so attempted to recapture that reflection. As mentioned, some flakes were huge - the one at left measuring (with a ruler!) to be a full 5 millimeters across! The flake is so bright because I was lined up with the sun's reflection, and the much shorter exposure required darkened the background snow... Similarly at right I found a pair of flakes that lined up their sun glints in the same direction, so was able to catch the pair with their crystal structure!

Well that was fun! Now I'm wishing for more quiet, cold days w/snow to look for more crystals and frost! Since we're still in the early days of February, I'm thinking the chances are good!

It Can Stop Anytime!

One of the joys of "Ketelsen East", especially after surviving the "hotter than hell pre-monsoon season of 2017" in AZ, is that it rains on a regular basis! There is nothing like opening your windows and listening to a summer storm pass and lull you to sleep. Of course, the more violent ones with close lightening and thunder might cause you to re-close that window, but still - the rarity of a cool summer night with windows open is a real joy.

Of course, the payment one makes while living next to a river is that river will rise! Normally our little homestead lies about 40 yards from the bank of the Fox River, but the other morning after another 2" dumping overnight, I awoke to blue skies, but the body of water only about 20 feet from the house! 


I haven't worried much though - it was about this high in the Fall of 2008, shortly after our marriage. We got over 10" of rain over the long weekend and it quickly jumped to this same level. The photo at left shows a comparison image of the canoe racks the camp uses. The image at the top is from 2008 and the lower from the weekend. It appears this cycle is an inch or two higher than that one.

It is a little disconcerting to look out the sunroom windows and ONLY see water, but even with that last 20 feet to the house, it would have to come up a good foot to 18 inches to get into the house. We don't have a basement (unlike some nearby houses), and the drone of water pumps can be heard at night when it is quiet! At right is an HDR image, combining 3 different exposures, so that the fruit basket isn't black, nor the outside an overexposed white, showing our truly "riverside view"!

The other advantage of a high river is that we get dozens of carp grazing in the yard! They seem to like the grass, seemingly to wrench it out of the ground along the shallow edge. Walking up to them carefully, they appear to be up to 18" long and up to 5" wide, sometimes in groups of 3 or 4.  Soon enough as the water recedes, there will be a plethora of fish trying to get back to the main stream. I've tried before to catch them by hand and it is harder than you can imagine! A large fishing net helps, and I rescued a few, but mostly the egrets and herons come in and feast in the yard! Melinda witnessed a heron swallow a fish almost as large as he was, and was barely able to get off the ground again! Might be fun to try to record those photons!



Since these photos on Saturday, the Fox seems to have dropped a couple inches today even though it rained hard yesterday.  Looks like the peak has passed!

Fishing Season!

I'm currently at "Ketelsen East" in the western suburbs of Chicago, enjoying some "real" Springtime weather! After already threatening to break 100F about the time I left Tucson 10 days ago, the cooler temperatures, rain, flowers and outbreak of green here is a welcome sight! And we've had it all - 4" of rain over last weekend, and tonight there are freeze warnings in the area, so Summer still seems a long way off!

But with the downpour this weekend, on Monday the Fox River jumped out of its bank and got within about 50 feet of the house here! The image at left shows the water as it came up the "canoe beach" at far left and filled a depression in the middle of the lawn as shown. As the water drops back down, usually carp, some of pretty good size (I've seen up to 20" long!) are trapped in the "yard pond"! Somewhere I've got pictures that Melinda took of me trying to catch them by hand (hard) or with a large fishing net (easier) to dump them back in the river. After I gave up that earlier time, the herons and egrets move in and they were gone in a day.

So I wasn't really surprised, but startled when I saw my first great blue heron appear just before sunset tonight. The only telephoto I have is a 500mm Nikon mirror lens of '70s vintage given to me by a friend, and I rushed to install the adaptor that lets me use it with my Canon camera. Unfortunately I missed his playing with a sizeable fish, but got a nice portrait at left in the "yard pond" before he moved back over to the main river channel for some fishing where only his head is visible.


It started raining pretty hard again, and my last view of him was standing on the bank looking across it, or perhaps looking downstream at a kayak that was bearing down on him as he took off a few seconds later as they passed going upstream. If there are still fish in the pond, they will be back, though other than the one I saw the heron play with, I've not spotted any...

Snow Flurries!

I've been at "Ketelsen East" for a few days taking care of some business with the house here. While the weather can be unpredictable in January, it has been unseasonably warm the week I've been here. Till today it hasn't been below freezing, and fog has been more of a driving issue than snow or ice.


So I was sort of surprised to see that we'd received some snow flurries overnight. No accumulation to speak of, but still something worth documenting! In cases like this, I do what I normally do - grab the macro and go close! I didn't feel like kneeling in the mud to get snow pellets in the leaves on the ground, so looked for something a little higher to shoot. Fortunately there are some evergreen shrubs, I think a variety of Japanese Yew, that formed a nice, high contrast background for the snow, shown at left. I was hoping to see some signs of snowflake or ice crystal structure, but as you can see, there is little sign of that. I moved over to a patio table and shot an isolated oak leaf and acorn shell covered with snow as well.

The little acorn shell looked cute enough, sort of like a sake cup full of snowflakes that I moved in to another for its close-up. And oh yes - these are all focus-stack images to increase the depth of field. The yew photo is composed of 12 frames, the leaf 14, and this little acorn cap combines 18 frames, each with a slightly different focus setting, combined in Photoshop to extend the depth of focus...

So I was disappointed that I didn't catch any crystal or snowflake structure, but so much of that depends on temperature, humidity and other conditions that I've learned that catching snowflakes to document is really a hard thing to do! Looking out the window a couple hours later, it was snowing again! Calm winds, the HUGE flake conglomerations were mostly falling straight down, so I went out again to see how they looked under the macro.

BETTER! First, the flakes were huge! The yew "leaves" are about 2mm wide, so some of the flakes were considerably larger! It was still tough to find a complete snowflake, but at least there were parts of them visible. The temperature was pretty much right at freezing, so they were melting over the space of a few minutes, so likely would have been better if it were a few degrees colder. Still, overall it was nice to catch a little of what I was looking for... Forecast is for colder temps and more flurries without much accumulation, so I'll keep on the lookout...

Firstie Freezie!

Still in Illinois and still enjoying the remarkable string of great Fall weather! Seems we've been enjoying blue skies and few rains - virtually ALL of the crops have been harvested, as seen on my trip to Iowa yesterday. In decades past we've gone well into December, so harvest completion by mid-November is a good thing for the farmers. We just had our first freeze the other night, a full month later than the median date of 11 October (median date indicates half of first freeze is before, half after, for average of last 30 years).

With the success of my "dewdrop" pictures out in the yard a week or two ago, when I woke to find the white frosting on the lawn, I ran for the camera and tripod and went to work. The setup is the same from the dew shots, 100mm macro, full-frame Canon 6D and about 3cm of extension tube for more magnification. Now I've shot and posted some frost pictures before with great results from a few years back. But I suspect my techniques have improved some over the years, so was looking forward to shooting more. After the spectacular shots of the dandelion seed heads in the dewdrop post, I was on the lookout for more dandelions, but you know, if there were any, they were well-disguised among the frost crystals! I swore that the image at right was a dandelion until I started looking it on the computer - it might be a seed head, but is not a dandelion - still some interesting crystals on it...


I still use the focus-stacking technique to combine several images to keep the full range of the image in focus. I've found that for full-resolution viewing though, only the range of focus of the area of interest needs to be stacked. So some of these are only a few combined frames. At left is a leaf where all 19 exposed frames were taken, which takes a lot of processing time to stack them all. At right is a close-up with only 8 frames which takes less time with no decrease in sharpness.

I know little about frost formation. The little reading I've done shows there are multiple kinds of frost depending on humidity and temperature of air and surfaces. But there are some really interesting-looking crystals that almost look like hollow tubes in these pictures. Will have to keep at it, and try to get closer still! As it was, kneeling in the wet cold grass was still worth the results, I think!

Making Lemonade...

Still hanging out in Illinois and while it would be great to have an extended foliage season, it is an ethereal thing and does not last long. About the only sources of brilliant color are the "Burning Bush" (Euonymus alatus) which is visible on almost every block in town, it seems! Even at the cottage here we've got several, as seen on the left. As you can see, most of the leaves from the big trees have all turned brown and fallen, though one high overhead still has leaves that I'm waiting to fall before climbing the roof and cleaning it and the eaves out. But there are still points of color to capture - right under our bush, for example! At right is a close-up of some of the scarlet leaves, along with what I suspect is a mulberry leaf (known for their asymmetrical shape) and the already-down brown oak leaves litering the ground...


So without foliage to shoot, what else is there? Well, like the title sez, you gotta take what life gives you and make the best of it. The weather has been so great here - nearly a month it seems of clear skies! And almost Arizona temperatures! Highs have occasionally pushed 80, though has very slowly been descending thru the 60s and now the 50s. But I've been able to ride my bike nearly every day, if not 2 or 3 times a day! And with the clear skies, what do you get every morning - dew! I am fond of telling my bloggin' buddy Ken on Long Island that if you get out the macro lens, almost everything is interesting! And even a dew-covered lawn is no exception.

Here are some typical macro shots of dewy grass. Actually, I used the macro PLUS about 3cm of extension tubes to extend the lens outward and get an even closer view. It is truly amazing the tiny droplets of dew that condense out of the air and coat everything! And as at right, each little droplet acts like a tiny lens, forming an image of what is behind.


Fortunately, there were a few things that weren't blades of grass. There were a few late-season dandelions, and they look absolutely amazing on a dewy morning! While looking a little aged and sporting a few spider webs, the droplets look like so much bubbles of foam. Note the image at left shows nearly the entire seed head.

Unfortunately, this blog has a 1600 pixel-wide image limit. Note that the camera sensor of the 6D has over 5400 pixels. By reducing an image to the blog limit, resolution is decreased by a huge amount after down-sampling the image. One way around that is to zoom in to full resolution - take a 1600 pixel-wide sample of the full image. Shown at right is a crop of the left image showing the full resolution of the original... Click on the right image twice to load the full-size image! Truly Amazing!


Note that these aren't straight images, not that I'm cheating! These are focus-stacked images, which I've talked about before. With the macro working close-up, the depth of field is very narrow and the images above are a combination of 13 individual frames, each with slightly different focal points. Photoshop is then used to pull out the sharp parts of each image for the final stack... The results can be inspirational! At left is another shot (15 frames combined!) of another dandelion seed head taken a couple days earlier. This one has more seeds, so don't get the cross section view as above, but can see "down" into the head. I can't decide which I prefer, so feel free to let me know which is your favorite!


Finally one more demonstration! A dewy lawn is a good place to demonstrate the Heiligenschein! If you look at the shadow of your head, there is normally a bright spot caused by a couple of factors. In the image at left, you can see the camera (held away from my head w/two hands) recorded it as a brightening centered about where the lens would be, marked by the white "X". Click on it and you can see that the brightening is caused by two effects. The major one is that in the exact shadow of the camera, the sun/camera/grass is in a direct line and there are no shadows, so the intensity is at a maximum. Once you move off that line, you can see the shadows of the grass blades, so average intensity is lower. In addition, the dew adds a brightening - you can see individual bright points as the droplets focus sunlight which reflects off the back of the droplet to come back out towards the sun. This "cats-eye" reflection occurs, ironically with cat's eyes in the dark with a flashlight, or is what causes traffic signs to glow when your headlights are on as the glass beads on them reflect the light back to the driver. So the combination of lack of shadows and cats-eye reflection from individual drops both contribute to the Heiligenshein...

One more thing to point out... You might know about rainbows - the circular colored effect that occurs at 42 degrees from your shadow when there are droplets of water in the air. You can also make an artificial rainbow with a garden hose if the sprayer makes droplets fine enough. And similarly, if you look 42 degrees from your shadow on a dewy lawn, you can see a brightening - demonstrated at right. Not a lot of color, likely because the dew drops aren't perfect little spheres, but they are close enough that you can see lots of the droplets reflecting light back, some showing some bright colored spots...

So that is what I've been observing lately - whatever nature throws my way! Unfortunately, with the man-made hassle of Daylight-Savings Time, I've now got to get up an hour earlier to catch the dewy dawn light, and I'm not an early riser. So no dew pictures since last Sunday!

A Spectral Two-Fer!

Here in Tucson, our Summer rainy season is winding down - right on schedule! You can usually start planning on astronomical observing opening up again in mid-September after the rain starts (and threatens most every day) around the Fourth of July. Our "monsoon" season provides a nice break during the hottest (and most humid) time of the year, so we don't have to worry about fighting discomfort of warm temps and bugs that seem to wait till then to "bug" you!

Yesterday the weather forecasters were saying there was a 50% chance of possibly severe storms, and the next week looked to be a drying trend as weather patterns changed. True to their word - clouds thickened and threatened after lunch. We found ourselves watching from the second floor of the Cancer Center, where Melinda was getting her occasional topping-off of fluid. With the desert dryness and depending how she feels, it is tough to drink enough, so the liter of fluids on about a weekly schedule is welcomed. While we used to enjoy the view of the mountains and the employee parking lot in years past, we now enjoy the mountains and the construction zone as the treatment center expands.

Yesterday, even the mountains disappeared as storms moved in from the southwest. It never rained more than sprinkles at the Cancer Center as they moved around us, but the conditions were fine for rainbow formation! The thing to note is how low the rainbow arc is in the sky. Of course, if you know how they are formed, you know that they appear at a constant angle of 138 degrees from the sun. Since it was about 2:30pm, the sun was still high in the sky and as a result, the bow peaked out at a low angle, just clearing the trees around the construction zone. With the sun higher in the sky, the bow would be even lower - I was on a winter bike ride when we ran into showers and the bow didn't clear the horizon! Of course, you can make your own "rainbow" with a garden hose at high noon and you can see the nearly full circle of the bow around the shadow of your head projected on grass. The close-up at right shows the acute angle it forms with the ground...

A few hours later, after we got home, another band of intense showers moved over us again and the process was repeated. This time, just 45 minutes before sunset the sun was much lower and correspondingly, the rainbow appeared much higher in the sky. At left is shown a panorama-mode image of the rainbow, taken with my IPhone 6S from our back yard. The shower was intense - about the hardest I've ever seen it rain for all of about 2 minutes! But as soon as it passed, the sun appeared, so I knew there was likely a bow... In the close-up at right, you can also spot a fainter secondary bow outside the main one. This second bow is caused by a second reflection inside a raindrop, instead of just the single reflection that causes the main bow. Note also that the colors are reversed - in the outer secondary bow, the red color appears on the inside - on the primary rainbow, red is on the outside! Rain and rainbows are rare enough in the desert that a simple comparison of the heights of the arc are difficult to come by, so it was neat to see this pair in the same afternoon.

And right at sunset about 6:30, some more dramatic lighting appeared - direct sunlight bathing the clouds in sunset-colored clouds while the gibbous moon and shadowed dark clouds also remained in the view. Nice contrast, nice colors, but tough to underexpose enough to not saturate the highlights. Will have to re-read the 6S manual again!

Before The Big Blow!

We happened to see the weather report this evening at 5:30 - there was rain on the other side of the Rincons, and some on the other side of the Catalinas, moving away from us. It had been clear all day and looked to be a clear evening. But just before sunset, there appeared to be some active clouds, so I got out a camera and took some images for a time0lapse clip - here every 6 seconds, and played back at 10/second.  Except for the first cloud taken with a 300mm, all the rest were taken with the Canon 70-200 at various focal lengths. Here is the clip:





Like I said, they appeared REALLY active, and those dark clouds moving in at the end also brought some lightning and distant thunder too! Before the possible storm came in, I thought of trying to shoot the evening planets to the west - what, you didn't know about them? Well, Jupiter is low in the west, but Venus is coming up behind the sun (well past superior conjunction), and Mercury is visible too for a day or two before it dives down to pass in front of the sun (inferior conjunction). I hadn't seen the later two for a while, so walked down the block to avoid some power lines.

Sure enough, they were pretty easily visible. Venus is hard to miss, and Jupiter was about to get eaten by the front of clouds moving in, and finally Mercury was spotted just before the 3 planets were reduced to 2 planets visible. Shown at left is the image I got - click it to load the full-size. For a cheat-sheet, you can click the right hand image with labels to better locate them. Taken with the 70-200 at 70mm with the XSi (APS sensor) with 1 second exposure at F/6.3.

After walking the block back home, I swapped out for the kit lens and went back out to try to shoot the incoming storm. Wow, what a show! Before the rain hit, I shot a number of 15-second exposures from the cul-de-sac towards the Catalinas where lightning looked more numerous. Truth be told, this is a combo of 3 consecutive frames - exciting stuff, but needed to run for cover when the big drops started landing. It dumped a good half inch, so was glad to document the storm coming in. You can't always do astronomy, especially during the monsoon season, but you gotta always try to have fun whatever you do!