Another Post-Thanksgiving Outing

It was such a perfect Thanksgiving weekend - Temps in the low 70s and a perfect blue sky. On Saturday was the final football game of the year - archrival Arizona State was in town for the big game. If AZ wins, they qualify for a bowl game, lose and they are done till next Fall. Can't get much more dramatic!

I took the opportunity to do a little road trip to "A" Mountain, otherwise known as Sentinel Peak, located about a mile to the SW of Tucson's downtown area. It has a paved road to the peak, a few hundred feet above the desert floor and the view extends from south to north - an expansive view that is popular all day long!

I chose to set up my TEC 140 refractor and take some photos of my favorite landmarks, and with Arizona Stadium a mere 3 miles away, used it as a target to evaluate a 2X converter (doubled the focal length, thus the scale of images). At left is a photo taken with a 50mm "normal" lens with my fave targets labeled.

I've used this telescope to image AZ Stadium before. Seeing effects (atmospheric turbulence caused by mixing of different temperatures of air) usually limit the sharpness at 3 miles distance. But still, the scope is ALMOST sharp enough to recognize people from 3 miles! Shown here are the full frames of the Canon 6D of the stadium view. Clearly seen is that in the view with the 2X converter at right, the image is larger and field of view is narrower. The real question is whether use of the converter provides any advantage, or can you just enlarge the straight image in Photoshop...

Of course, the real limitation on this blog is that images are limited to 1600 pixels wide, while the camera has almost 5500 pixels across the image! So just showing you the full image above you are losing a huge amount of resolution because each pixel there shows an average of almost 16 pixels in the original image (4 across and 4 high).

So here is the answer. Shown here at left are full resolution crops from single images from each configuration. The fields of interest are the same - the 2X converter version below is on the left side without the converter so you can compare directly (taken a few minutes apart, 2X later). It looks fuzzier, but again, because the scale is doubled, is resolution any worse? I think the answer is no - the bowl games played are about equally legible, as are details in people and clothing being worn. I think both are limited by the atmospheric turbulence - the effect can be seen in the horizontal white line in each - wiggles seen in it is caused by turbulent air mixing at these large magnifications... Oh, and by the way, I went to some length to minimize vibration - used a 2-second delay after pushing the camera button, and also locked up the view mirror to minimizw "mirror slap". So it is a wash for distant objects to use the converter or not. Perhaps closer objects less limited by "seeing" might work better with the 2X converter...

I then moved to a few of my other favorite targets. At left is the old Pima County Courthouse, with its distinctive tile domed roof. It is interesting that it is seemingly surrounded by newer boring architecture...

Also photographed, but not detectable by eye mid-afternoon was the "window" of Window Rock. A good 16 miles away from my "A" Mountain observing location, it is visible by eye from Midtown when conditions are right - preferably evening or morning twilight. Here the scope makes shooting it simple!




I also did a 10-frame mosaic past AZ Stadium up through the NE side of town. Combined together in Photoshop it shows the stadium, Catalina High School just above and left of the stadium (in truth about 3 miles past it!), Tucson Medical Center upper left of stadium, then the Mount Lemmon Highway which leads up the mountain in the far distance on the NE side of town. Right about where the road disappears, "Bad Dog" overlook can be seen - another favorite lookout of mine! Of course, here the mosaic is only the 1600 pixel limit wide - was more fun in the original nearly 15,000 pixels wide with the full camera resolution...

And one more shot are some of the homes creeping up the foothills of the Catalinas. I think these are about 12 miles away and you can see how they get permission to build right next to the National Forest boundary considerably up the slope of the foothills. Good thing they don't get much snow and ice here - can you imagine climbing those hills in slick weather?!

After an hour taking in a shooting the view, I headed home. It was an exciting game - the home Wildcats hanging on to a thin lead, then at the end the "Scum Devils" overtook and won the game by a single point! Next year!

Out And About!

While at "Ketelsen East", I always enjoying staying at home out in the woods, but friends and family are only a couple hours away, so usually hit the road pretty often. My family is mostly just west of the Mississippi River, so an even 2 hours away, and we usually reserve Sundays for the drive to visit brothers and sisters, usually while eating at a local restaurant. With such a short drive time, I usually sleep in my own bed, so usually leave our dinners by 8pm to get home at a decent hour.

Case in point was early in this last trip when my brother Jim hosted us for a pool party on a Sunday. The "excuse" as if we needed one to get together, were for the July birthdays - our step-mom Diane, sister Kathy and great niece Alivia. At left they get to share a cake, made by my niece Marsha who works in a bakery.

A secondary excuse was that Jenn (my niece) and husband Chet were visiting from Connecticut! I remember their wedding in Des Moines 15 years ago (Happy Anniversary!). While a few years old, I believe it was the first time I'd met their son Sawyer, shown at left playing in the pool with his dad.

And if we needed any more reason to congregate, two of my college buddies happened to be along! Shown at left, Michael Dorn at right had visited Melinda and I a few years ago and happened to be out that weekend visiting me again. He met my family on a trip to the ancestral farm 40 years ago and wanted to join us again. The fellow in the white shirt is Luke Kuhl, who was my college roommate for 2.5 years at Iowa. He got more than a little ribbing for his name, since we went to school right after the movie "Cool Hand Luke" was popular! I hadn't seen Luke in close to 6-8 years, so was great to catch up - the 3 of us lived in the "Penthouse" 5th floor at Hillcrest Dormitory back in Fall of '72! Always fun to observe how nobody ever changes!

A few days later and I was doing a road trip. It had been a few years since Melinda and I had visited my friend Beth and Phillip in Minneapolis. It was definitely time to do another visit. Beth is one of my dearest friends again, going back to college days 40 years ago. She and Phillip survived a horrific car crash 15 years ago that left her confined to a wheelchair. But thanks to technology and her service dog Mika, it doesn't slow her down much. We made a trip to the Arboretum, one of her favorite places, as well as a restaurant overlooking the Chaska Curling Center where the USA curling team practices and competes! We also took advantage of Phillip's bar-b-que expertise - that is him at left in their garden of a back yard...

At right is a shot of Beth and Mika. I've never seen a service dog at work, and it is pretty amazing what she can do from opening doors, calling elevators, picking up items Beth needs. She is very well behaved and obviously they have worked together for a long time. It was hard to say goodbye, but eventually it was time. Phillip took our photo together, and like my selfie "rule of thumb" - it will come out fine as long as you have someone gorgeous next to you!








On the return trip to "Ketelsen East" I had intended to stop in Cedar Rapids, Iowa to see some of the crew from my old RAGBRAI bike team. That Friday they were going to load the bus for the trip to western Iowa to ride back across the state over the next week. Unfortunately, there was bad weather on the way, so didn't stay till evening to visit, but did pause nearby to see my nephew Jeff, wife Sandy and their beautiful daughters. Claire, shown at left, had just lost a front tooth and is showing the note from the tooth fairy. Because of her bravery in pulling it out, the tooth fairy left her money with glitter on it! Her younger sister Natalie was off to the sitter most of the day, but I got to see her just before leaving for the storm, as shown at right. Again - selfie, someone gorgeous - successful shot!

I stayed just ahead of the storm for the 3 hour trip back towards Chicago. Away from home for a few days, but with lots of memories of friends and family...

Another Hard Goodbye!

When we returned from our recent trip to the Midwest, we were shocked at YellowCat's appearance - he had lost weight and was lethargic. With his FIV+ status we took him in to the vet and they put him on IVs and did a battery of tests. He had a bad tooth, but nothing extraordinary - didn't eat on his own there either - they were syringe feeding him there for the 4 days he spent there. We considered putting him down then, but decided to return him to friendlier confines for a while, so took him home...

YellowCat came to us 6 years ago - a feral cat that showed up at the food bowl out front - always with a worried look on his face - as shown at left. While shy, he showed promise and we took him to the vet to get neutered and tested before exposing him to our other cats. The bad news is that he was FIV+. He could infect our other cats if they got in fights, so it was important to prevent that. He seemed pretty docile though, and we developed the crate method of introducing new cats to the others. Set up a dog crate in the middle of the living room - a little cat house where the newcomer can live while being exposed to the other cats. We've done this with all our new cats, and except for another FIV+ cat Spitz last year, has always worked well. At right, YellowCat gets a respite from the crate while the other cats are out of the room.

He was a quiet boy, but a great cat. There were some trust issues when he was in the crate, but after getting used to life in the Kitty Resort, for the longest time he wouldn't even go into the back yard! He often joined us on the couch looking for attention, but only in his low-key way, never begging for it, but close enough to accept donations.

Getting back to the narrative, at home he seemed to improve. He ate food regularly, but he declined slowly again. Another trip to the vet and they gave him some fluids, shrugging their shoulders what his diagnosis might be. We had scheduled a dental surgery for today, but alas, he couldn't keep his appointment... He stopped eating last Friday and I started syringe feeding him. That went ok, but he continued to slide - picked up a strange limp, his hips splaying out occasionally. Finally last night he lost control of his hips and it was time to call the emergency vet to see about those final arrangements we'd been considering all along. Of course, all this happened about Midnight, but he is finally at peace. His 6 years spent with us were great ones - certainly he wouldn't have lasted long with his FIV status on the street, so glad we helped out with that. But it is so hard to say goodbye to a friend and always will be.

Sibling Visit!

We got back safely to AZ on Thursday evening (actually Friday morning), only 3 hours late or so - no reason from the airlines - just the way it is these days! At least they didn't cancel the flight like a year ago, stranding us in Chicago for 2 extra days!  We found upon arrival that Tucson had just broken 100F for the first time Thursday, and is supposed to be something close to 110F over the weekend! It makes that final day in Chicago with a 77F high temp look mighty fine! But anyway, here we are back in Tucson...

And I'm still catching up on May posts even though the calendar sez June! Way back 3 weeks ago, before we even left for the Midwest, we were paid a visit by my sister Linda and her husband Lauren. He had never been to Arizona and she had not since she helped care for me after my first aortic valve replacement surgery 12 years ago, so figured it was a good time for a visit. They camped out at a nearby hotel and spent a few days with us, then took off to the Canyon and northern Az while we flew off to Chicago, to see them up there later in the weekend!

Anyway, we had a great time - I got to impress them with a tour of the Mirror Lab where I work, and they took an early morning tour of the Desert Museum on their own while I got some work hours in. Otherwise we spent lots of time and meals together and tried to give them a taste of Tucson. Lauren was impressed with the "dry heat" and how he never sweated with temps in the 90s, as it evaporated as it was supposed to once he got away from the humidity of Illinois. He was also impressed with the view of the mountains circling the city, so what better day trip to take than a leisurely drive up Mount Lemmon for a late lunch at the Iron Door Inn up by the ski slopes of the mountaintop? While a decent host, I didn't play much of a photographer, so don't have a lot of images of their visit other than the Mount Lemmon trip... Our first stop was at "Bad Dog" (actually Babad Do'ag) overlook shortly after ascending the slopes. That is where I pointed out all the saguaro flowers we could see from that viewpoint, yet another mile up the road and there were no saguaros to be seen at the slightly higher elevation...

Another 10 miles and we got to "Windy Point", another fine place to stop for bathrooms if not for the view. While I've not been there for ages, Linda took off scrambling over the rocks like a native, so I tried to stay within range and took a few pictures. We finally got to a point where you couldn't go much further, a great viewpoint of the Tucson Valley and the mountains beyond. Of course, knowing me, with a willing model that would hold still for a few seconds, I took a stereo pair - at left presented as an anaglyph - so get out your red/blue glasses to view the image at left. Linda told me her granddaughters enjoy looking at the 3D images I post, so they should be doubly thrilled to see grandma on the edge of the cliff! She also tried the "flying" pose a couple times, claiming it felt natural overlooking the canyon. Holding it again for a few seconds, I took a 6-frame panorama to take her and the full view in. Cropped down to reasonably fit a rectangular format here, I printed her out the original 12"X36" banner print and framed it for her while we were in Illinois - she liked it!  Note that Kitt Peak is on the horizon over her right shoulder!

We finished our drive to the mountaintop, enjoying the cool temperatures and the hummingbirds at the Iron Door patio, though we ate inside. We made the short trip down to Summerhaven to check out one or two shops, then headed down the hill. We stopped once more just above Windy Point at Geology Vista - a more regular stop of mine. Grabbing the binoculars, I pointed out a few objects of interest to Lauren, including the view at left of part of the "Boneyard", a storage yard of military aircraft for parts and available for return to service. This image is taken with a 300mm lens, and is shown at full resolution of the Canon XSi (pretty severe crop). Besides the hundreds of acres of planes shown here, at the upper part of the picture is shown the Pima Air and Space Museum, with its own impressive collection of planes. I've also paid a couple visits there the last 2 months and have yet to post about those trips, so still have more to catch up on!

So they had a great trip, and talked about another visit sooner than the 12 elapsed years since Linda has been here.  While we were a little concerned about how draining their visit would be on Melinda, she handled it fine, though perhaps their not staying with us was key to that.  I recall Lauren might have an allergy to our cats too, and with 9 of them around, that might have been a problem!

More Outings with the "Big Six"

I'm now into the second week of ownership of the Canon 6D, and now have a few hundred frames under the belt. I like it a lot, but have still to dive into the owners manual. Sounds like a good exercise while flying back to Tucson in a few days. For now, I'm comfortable using it for macro stuff around the house, and doing some family portraits, so will bring you some of the highlights.

Here be anaglyphs!
A day or two after we arrived, the iris patch adjacent to our house started blooming. Unfortunately, a heavy rain hit a day later and knocked them all to the ground, so no iris images... Fortunately, a few days after that our neighbor Elaine's peony bushes started blooming, so have some flower pictures to post. She has a nice collection of various hybrids with an astounding range of features... I thought I've posted about them before, but darned if I can find them in any searches... In my opinion, one of the most spectacular are these that almost look like tulips, with a large white bowl with a tangle of snake-like structures in the center. I thought that the 3D anaglyphs showed it off the best, so here is a wide shot at left, and one of just the center at right.



Another variety is a 2-tone striking blossom with a pale yellow center, with outer wreath of pale lavender. Then, while understated, there is a pure white one sort of like the tulip outer structure above, but with a shredded white interior. Again, 3D anaglyphs work best in showing these shapes, if not the colors. Sometimes the colors are affected by the red/blue filters in the glasses. The effect doesn't seem too bad for these, but does affect the yellow center in the flowers above...

Ok, enough of the 3D for this post - STEREO MODE - OFF!



Finally one of the last striking peonies of Elaine's collection is a light purple or dark lavender, with an interior of the yellow serpent-like structures of the tulip-shaped version above. Sorry I don't know the names for these varieties, but looking at the thousands of Google images, I'm not unconvinced there may be hundreds if not thousands of varieties! We have a small patch we planted a few years ago, but not sure what variety it is. The picture at right shows the current state - still a ball, with some ants feeding on the nectar leaking out of the bud... Hopefully it will bloom before we take off to remember what kind we have! BTW, the image at right is a 5-frame focus stack with the macro to make sure all the details are in focus...




We made another trip to Iowa on Sunday - I guess it must be a tradition! We had a dinner/pool party at brother Jim's house in DeWitt. It is a great gathering place - besides the pool and what would be called a lanai or lounge area in some places, their entire basement is a "party room" with full kitchen, TV room and large meet and greet area. Sister-in-law Karen came on RAGBRAI with us one year, and gave us a great surprise by inviting our buddy Carl to drive in from Cedar Rapids! What a nice shock to see him walking up. Besides our 20-year RAGBRAI history, he and Melinda are buddies on the Facebook, so we both spent some quality time with him. As he left, we took the snapshot at left - itself a test of the 6D. The TV room is a dark place and here the camera's ISO is set to 25,600, and this shot is a 125th of a second at F/5. This is also a significant crop, so a little noise and sharpness loss is visible in the full-size image shown here, but not too bad...

I spent a little time with niece Sandy and their 16-month-old Natalie. Now when Jeff (Sandy's husband) and his siblings were small, whenever a camera appeared, they went into "performance" mode - always a quick, easy smile, and easy to pose and photograph. While with mom at right she was more interested in eating her snack, at right you can see the start of her "performance" mode teethy grin! Perhaps she hasn't finalized "the look", but she is on her way!






And I've been just hanging around taking the occasional photograph around the house too. I saw a shot across the river from us when we first arrived, but needs a dead-calm river, which we haven't had much of lately. Shown at left is a line of colored chairs that caught my eye. The morning was calm, but not quite calm enough - still some water movement. The 105mm kit lens (the longest lens I've got along) doesn't make it large enough, especially for the full-size sensor of the 6D, but I did what I could.

Another of my activities here is my daily (sometimes twice daily!) bike rides on the recumbent. It has been really nice to get out every day for some physical activity. I still look at the recumbent as a little dodgy in traffic - tough to start from a stop, and with the upright position, I can't see behind me well. So mostly I go to the local Riverbend Park and take advantage of a mile-or-so path around the periphery. No motorized traffic, and only a few dog-walkers and other bikers to watch out for. Anyway, coming up the hill around a little pond with the curve of the path leading to the horizon, I thought it might make a nice picture, and indeed, I like it! So that is the reason for the image at right. The fence at left is a dog run, the fence at left is a small skate park, and I think you can see the small pavilion for all-weather events and playground equipment at center too. A nice, all-purpose place to spend some time...

A Visit, an Outing, Repeat...

Last week Melinda Jo's buddy Sally Jo (both of them nee Johnson!) came down for a few day's visit. Sharing a middle and last name through nursing school and Delnor Hospital, how could you not learn to be great friends? Everyone who knew their names assumed they were related, but nowadays, they only act like sisters! They spent a good three days gabbing like crazy for 12 hours/day. Sally's only request was to go out observing one night since she had never had an opportunity to look through a telescope. Well, how can I turn down a request like that?!

We had a couple partly cloudy evenings, so finally went out Wednesday, the last evening Sally was in town. Even though only a day short of Full Moon, we drove the hour up to Geology vista. In case views of the heavens fell short of expectations, there were always the pretty lights of the Tucson Valley to entertain!

The atmospheric seeing was quite good! After plopping down the TEC140 down on its mount, I first went over to Mercury, low in the west. A couple weeks short of its transit across the face of the Sun on Monday, 9 May, it showed a nice, if not colorful (from atmospheric dispersion) crescent as it passes between us and the Sun. The planet Jupiter passing high overhead was just stunning, with the moons showing their disks. We could identify Ganymede merely from showing the largest disk!

I didn't take many pictures as running the telescope took most of my attention. But I did take a shot of the Pima County Fair, the center of attention on the southeast side of Tucson. Shown at left it is the bright collection of lights under the profile of the Santa Rita Mountains, about 45 miles distant. Pointing the scope at the fairground midway (about 25 miles distant), Sally was amazed at the amount of details visible.

I had noticed an array of red lights blinking in unison to the east looking out past the local hills. Shown at right is a shot, both of these taken with my 100mm macro, which was what was on the camera... They looked to be pretty distant - clicking on the picture shows the most distant peak to be Dos Cabesos over 60 miles away past Willcox. My comment to the crew was that the only time I've seen red lights flashing in unison like this was for a windmill farm, though I was unaware of any in Arizona. The view in the camera and in the telescope revealed nothing - at least they didn't appear to be moving, so UFOs were out of the question, but their source remained a mystery.

Heading towards home, I talked the girls into pausing at "Bad Dog" (actually Babad Do'ag - the native American name of the mountain).  I was thinking with the full moon it might be possible to record the domes of Kitt Peak over the lights of Tucson.  I dug out the 300mm lens from it's case in the back of the van and took a few shots.  It was a tough get - expose too long and the lights of Tucson were way overexposed.  But much less and the feeble light of the moon off the 60 mile distant domes through the haze might not be recorded.  I took 4 frames and stacked them once home to reduce noise - the domes are there, but took a bit of image manipulation to pull them out.  Click on the image to see them at all - above the red cell tower towards the left side of the image!

So while we had a good outing, it gnawed at me to figure out what the lights were. In addition there were a couple other targets that I would have taken in had the chance permitted. On Sunday I went up again, this time before sunset, to chase down some of them. As soon as the scope was plopped down this time, I went straight for the source of the lights to the east - windmills! Shown at left is a 5-frame panorama taken with the TEC140 for maximum details. I had not been aware of any, but seeing is believing, as they say. Then I remembered some pictures I'd taken as we flew back to Tucson last June. I hadn't seen any windmills, but had seen a solar photovoltaic "farm" in the area. Shown at right is the image I took flying over the area. Looking on the Google today, I found the complex is called "Red Horse 2" and combines 650 acres of photo-voltaics and 16 windmill turbines, generating 71 megawatts of power. Located on the western slopes of the Winchester Mountains, it is located midway between Willcox and Cascabel. I've never noticed it from I-10 driving east, but will have to look for it now...


A couple other targets seen in daylight... There are many mountaintop observatories seen in and around Southern Arizona. Among them are Kitt Peak, Mount Hopkins, several atop Mount Lemmon and Mount Bigelow and of course, Mount Graham. Few know about the one south of the border near Cananea, Sonora. The Guillermo Haro Astrophysical Observatory is located about 20 miles south of the US border and 8 miles NE of Cananea, a copper-mining town in Sonora. I took a series of images of likely mountaintops with the TEC140, waiting till I got home to find the correct one after goosing contrast in Photoshop. Shown at left, it is about 100 miles distant from Geology Vista... Mentioned above, Mount Bigelow is home to some UA scopes, hidden among the trees, but from my vantage point, a nice array of TV transmitters for Tucson was visible from about 3.25 miles distance. It makes a nice resolution target - here cropped slightly from the Meade 80mm F/6 (480mm focal length).

Finally, as the sun set and it started darkening, I swung down towards the fairgrounds and took a few frames of the county fair midway. No great shakes with 25 miles of air between us, but the stripes of the big U.S. flag flying over the midway are easily resolved - still fun stuff nonetheless.

By the way, whenever I shoot through a telescope with this long of a focal length, there are a couple tricks to follow. Since vibration during even a short exposure can blur the image, I tend to always make sure "mirror lockup" on the camera is enabled, along with a 2-second (or more!) delay. That way, the vibration caused by the moving mass of the DSLR mirror has passed before the much lighter shutter vanes makes the exposure. This always helps get the sharpest images when shooting with focal lengths of 1,000mm or more.

It is always fun to spend time with telescope and camera, especially from a high location, just to see what you can see. Generally more than you think you can!

Mining the Archives!

We've not been out of the house much the last week other than visits to the oral surgeon and cancer center, which generally make for boring posts, so have been reviewing some of the photo archives to see potential post material I've missed lately. So not really timely, but this one is recent...

Just 2 months ago (13 December), on my way back from watching the sunset behind Kitt Peak from the Mount Lemmon Highway, I paused at Babad Do'ag ("Bad Dog" as I sometimes refer to it) as I frequently do. About 3 miles up the road to Mount Lemmon, it has a great parking lot and overlook with a spectacular views of the Tucson Valley and beyond. It is where I've shot images like at left with Kitt Peak in the far distance in silhouette behind the lights of metropolitan Tucson.



But there are other targets, including other observatories! To the south across the Tucson Valley are the Santa Rita Mountains, with Mount Wrightson as the highest peak on the left at about 9,500 feet. Mount Hopkins, about 1,000 feet lower at 8,500 feet right in the center of the frame at left is the home of the Multiple Mirror Telescope (MMT). Originally so-named because its innovative design combined the light-gathering power of 6 individual smaller mirrors each 1.8 meters (72") diameter, now consists of a single primary mirror 6.5 meters (256") diameter. I've got a connection to it as it was the first large mirror over 3.5 meters I polished the Mirror Lab where I work. A before-and-after image of the telescope from the website above is shown at right. People ask why it is still referred to as the MMT - my thought is that most large telescopes consist of primary and secondary mirrors to get the lights to the instruments, so "multiple" still applies!


Both of the above photos were taken on 13 December with my 200mm lens - the Kitt Peak shot a panorama put together from several images at 200mm focal length. The Santa Rita's shot was a single-shot taken with the same lens set to 110mm. Mount Hopkins at about 40 miles distance, is a little closer than Kitt Peak's 54 miles from "Bad Dog". At left here is a panorama put together from 8 images taken with the Meade 80mm F/6 APO (480mm focal length). Shown at the Blog's 1600 pixel limit, you can spot the squat building of the MMT atop Mount Hopkins at right center. At left is the frame showing the MMT at nearly full-resolution. Not a lot of details can be spotted compared to distant views of Kitt Peak, but you can see how the conical mountain profile would provide smooth laminar airflow over the peak, which is supposed to provide excellent seeing at MMT. There are actually a number of smaller scopes making up Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory near the peak at Hopkins, but they aren't visible here, since they are located on the south side on a saddle below the peak.


Finally, before leaving "Bad Dog" that evening, I took another set of images with the Meade scope in full darkness to see if I could still capture the mountain profile. Sure enough, with 30 second exposures, it can be spotted, since the profile is backlit by the light glow from Nogales, AZ another 30 miles to its south. The bright lights are either from the drag strip or the Pima County Fairgrounds near Houghton south of Interstate 10, about 20 miles away (halfway to MMT!).  Interestingly there are no star trails visible, though there is a lot of extinction that close to the horizon...  Even 30 seconds at F/6 failed to catch any. 

This is the second post mentioning MMT or Mount Hopkins. The last was from 2009 (!) when Melinda and I took part in a star party for the public at the base camp at the base of the mountain. I've not been up to MMT in over a dozen years - might be fun to take it in again since going digital!