Appulse Day!

Finally! Appulse Day has come and passed! You won't have to sit thru another blog post about the upcoming conjunction in the west till the next one rolls around! From Arizona it was great - not a cloud in the sky for much of the day - the monsoons are winding down, the temps have dropped below 100F and all is right with the world!

Besides visiting sis-in-law Maj, our friend Donna came down for the weekend from Phoenix, so left them instructions for viewing from our cul-de-sac and left Melinda in their capable hands to go observe the western horizon. Kitt Peak's profile has served as backdrop for a number of photo projects, from Solstice Sunsets to other conjunctions over one of the largest collections of professional observatories. The conjunction occurred almost due west, so found a spot about .6 miles south of milepost 37 on the Sasabe road for the perfect alignment. I arrived with a brilliant sun still up and it was uncomfortably warm till it sank below the level of the Coyote Mountains. The view at left shows sunlight streaming between the 4 mile separation of Coyote and Quinlan Mountains where Kitt Peak is located. Clear with a little haze in the air - visible when lit by that brilliant sun.


Well before the real sunset, I was anticipating trying to get a close-up view of the planets. I used the same setup put together to image the International Space Station earlier in the year - I used the XSi camera (APS sensor) with the TEC 140 along with a 2X Barlow to get a nice image scale with a minimum of blurring. While the combo worked for some images of the planets, moons and Observatory profile, I was afraid the twilight would be too dark at F/14 for video, so only used it for some images well before the planet-set. Shown here at left is the result of a 3-image stack to increase the signal for 1/2 second exposures. I didn't track, so exposures of the ultra-long focal length (at least about 2 meters) had to be under that magic number to prevent blurring from Earth's rotation to be objectionable... Still, I'm thinking the distortions of the atmosphere at low elevations were the major contributions of any unsharpness. Also visible is the atmospheric dispersion from the ocean of air overhead. At low elevations, due to the curvature of the earth the atmosphere acts like a prism dispersing light into a rainbow. Note the planets have a reddish lower limb and a blue-green upper edge caused by this effect. At right is a labeled version of the same image with the moons of Jupiter identified...


Before it had gotten too dark, I used the same setup to image the mountaintop as well. While I collected a full profile set to make a panorama, shown here at left is the part of the mountain where the planets later set. from left, the domes visible are the Burrell Schmidt of Case Western Reserve University, and right of the communications microwave tower are the UA's telescopes, the 1.8 meter and 36" Spacewatch telescopes, and at far right the flat-topped dome of the Bok Telescope, 2.3 meters diameter. As you will see in the video, both planets ended up disappearing behind the 1.8 meter Spacewatch Telescope. The combination of long focal length and 12 miles distance preserved pretty good detail at the Observatory. There are tricks to taking as sharp of images at possible though. With the nearly 2 meter focal length of the TEC plus 2X Barlow, I enabled mirror lockup in the camera, which moved out of the way when the shutter button was pushed. Then I enabled a 2-second delay to wait for vibrations to die down before the shutter was released. As a result you can easily see some details just a few inches across - not bad from 12 miles!


As the planets sank lower, I looked for Mercury, the third and least-mentioned addition to the party and spotted it briefly in binos. It is getting fainter, and hugging the horizon like it does here in the northern hemisphere I wasn't sure it could be recorded. I took a snapshot, shown here cropped from a 200mm shot with the XSi at 1/8 second. Not obvious, but can barely be seen in the full-size image if you click on it. Still not see it - well, check out the right image where it is labeled! Waiting for the sky to get darker doesn't work as it set a minute later... This one was stretched and cropped carefully to pull it out of the twilight.


With Mercury out of the picture, it was showtime! I set up the 300mm lens with Melinda's T1i camera for a wide-field shot - it does a good job of recording the scene as it appeared by eye or a little optical aid like binoculars. Unfortunately at this scale it shows some hints of the moons of Jupiter, the lower right of the pair, but doesn't resolve them well. Still, a nice view of the jewels hanging over the Observatory.

On the "big" scope (the TEC 140), I mounted the Canon 6D that had video capability. Since I had been recording the planets and mountain profile with the scope above, I didn't have time to change out the 2" adaptor to the field flattener and low-vignetting adaptor, so both here and in the video there is vignetting (darkening in the corners) from the 2" accessories blocking part of the image for the larger sensor. The image at right was taken just before starting the video, and clearly shows Jupiter's moons clearly resolved in the 30th of a second exposure (ISO 6400!). Similarly the video should have the same resolution, but is clearly degraded below.

Anyway, if you can tolerate a few minutes of my monotone narration, check out the video below. I did this live, so you get the full effect of the border patrol trucks zipping past my location, and catch me on a least 2 occasions calling "Venus" "Saturn"! In the meantime, there aren't any big events coming up on the horizon, so you will be spared my harping on you to get out and observe. I hope you checked it out - the girls at home enjoyed the view from the cul-de-sac, I hope you enjoyed it as well from your location!

An Early-Season Treat!

Happy Father's Day! I'm not a father, but sometimes feel like one, riding herd over 9 cats here at "Ketelsen West"! And since I do most of the cooking around here, I was thinking of doing a traditional Father's Day menu - picnic fare! So when at Safeway this week, I was thinking brat burgers - easy to do and taste great! The bulk sausage is sometimes difficult to find here, so I just slice back the skin and make a burger out of about 1.5 brats and cook them on the grill. And miracle of miracles, Safeway had some great-looking sweet corn! Now where I come from, you don't mess w/sweet corn till it is in season - mid to late July earliest in the Tall Corn State! But the stuff Safeway carried looked freshly picked (believe me, I know fresh-picked!), and I recall reading it was from AZ, not the homogenized California stuff likely picked last month... We sampled some last week and it brought tears to this corn-fed farm boy! So I picked up some more to add to the menu and a can of beans too and that was about all you needed... The pic is the result -stupendous! For those of you wondering condiments, I added a slice of cheddar to the brat burger, along with sliced jalapenos and avocados - and a Mexican Modelo Especial to round it out. A true Father's Day feast!

Mostly we celebrated by staying inside. According to the National Weather Service, it set a record temp of 115F today, and since my computer is still down at home, drove in to work to enter this. At 8:30 pm it was still 102, an hour after sunset! At least it is 5% humidity, but still warm. Oh, and by the way - that is another reason not to have daylight savings time - 'round here, you don't want the sun to stay up another hour into the evening! You want it to go down as early as possible, and 7:30 here at solstice is about the latest it stays up. You want it to start cooling down as soon as possible, and you make do with the sun coming up at 5:30 am if you have to, just to avoid having it stay up into the evening!

Anyway, a great day - a feast for Father's Day, the Cubs won again tonight, and someday soon, perhaps late September, it will cool down again!

Fair to Partly Cloudy!

Well, it is 31 December, so must be time for a look back at 2015! I'm shamefully copying Andrew Cooper, who started the review on his blog a few years back and has already finished his 2015 wrap-up! I echo his sentiments exactly in his wrap-up that it is a great place to look to see "where has the year gone?" and I tell everyone they should be blogging if nothing more than to keep a personal diary of their goings-on in life.

It has been a busy year for Melinda and I. Unfortunately, it revolves around her small-cell lung cancer battle now in its third year. While we've had our ups and downs over that time, the year ends on a good note as her current treatment with Irinotecan is having a dramatic effect on her tumors! She was given the month of November off of treatments to recover a little, and has just finished her 5th cycle of the drug, which was developed for colon cancer, but is making her a cover-girl for Dr. Garland's talks at conferences. After round 6 starting next week, there will be another PET scan the end of January - fingers crossed for continued good news!

Despite her treatment regimen and my continued part-time work at the Mirror Lab, we've been on the road a lot this year! A February trip to Puerto Peñasco to visit our buddy Margie resulted in a spectacular sunset across the Sea of Cortez with the 10,000+ foot high mountains of Baja visible just on the horizon (post of 3 March). A new (to me) 300mm close-focusing telephoto allowed close examination of some passing pelicans from the sea wall from the old port town (27 February).




A trip to "Ketelsen East" in June allowed us to meet our new great-nieces that live in Iowa. At left, brother and sister Jeff and Sarah show off their newborns, born 3 weeks apart a couple months earlier. Jeff (wife Sandy) holds Natalie and Sarah (husband Tom) shows off her daughter Adeline. Jeff and Sarah (and their sister Jennifer" had the "photo gene" growing up - always ready with a smile for the camera. The new ones have yet to learn those traits yet!  At right, their mother (my sister) Kathy takes a photo of another niece Breanna holding Adeline.  I'm sure the kids got tired of being passed around (post from 13 June)!



Other of my favorite images from that trip were a macro shot of some of the greenery out after a rain storm. I've always enjoyed close-ups of raindrops acting as little magnifying lenses showing details, here on the back of an oak leaf (post from 7 June). I had taken my IR modified camera which excels at showing greenery and haze penetration. Looking out the airplane window on the trip home, I captured reservoirs in Kansas, the Rocky Mountains in Colorado and in flying over our neighborhood in Tucson, "Ketelsen West", the first time I've happened to have a camera in hand as we flew over our house (post from 17 June)!



In October, we were able to travel to Columbia, South Carolina to help celebrate the 90th birthday (!) of Betty Quave, mother of my first wife Vicki. We've stayed close over the years and Melinda and I both consider her the mother we're both missing. Unfortunately, the weekend of the celebration coincided with a hurricane off the coast funneling moisture up through central South Carolina, resulting in 20 inches of rain over a couple days. Flooding closed down the city and curfews delayed our departure a day as well. We were not near any of the destruction, though we lost water overnight. The celebration got cancelled, so the family that had arrived celebrated in a local restaurant. At left is shown her collection of grandchildren gathered around her, including my niece Shannon, and nephews Rhett, Brian, Eric and Asher. At right is an "olde-timey" portrait of Betty spotted as we were going through photo collections at the house (post from 4 October).


We make 3 trips to Illinois this year - I won't relate here about our flight cancellation story which had us staying an additional day and a half in Illinois (16 June). But one of my favorite activities there is stalking wild game - mostly bugs, with the macro lens. Interestingly, I find new ones every year that I've not a clue what they are. Thanks to the Bugguide website, experts help ID what you are seeing! Such was the case with the ladybug larvae here at left, feeding on an aphid, and a lacewing larvae on the same plant a couple days later at right (21 August).



The attraction to the challenge of imaging lil' creatures extends to what I find in Tucson also. This year I discovered a colony of Mediterranean geckos living in front of the house, hunting insects under our porch light, and living in narrow cracks leading up under the eaves and roof. Extremely shy, they retreat quickly if you look at them very long, but thanks to the flash and the 300mm lens, I had fun capturing some images (12 July). Also in front of the house, the occasional praying mantis would show up under the light too, likely also hunting for smaller prey. They seemed to have some sort of treaty with the geckos, as they didn't seem to bother each other. They were much easier to approach, and I stacked the macro with extension tubes and used the on-camera flash of the XSi to get the hand-held shot at right for the 30 September post.



We had a pretty good monsoon season this year, and our cacti flowers responded, attracting the usual pollinators. I was able to set up on a couple nights, collecting the Rustic Sphinx moths that came to feed on the cereus repandus on the east side of the house. My post on 5 September is quite the collection of images, with 32 moth visits captured in 2,000 images over 2 nights. At left, one of the rustics docks with his huge proboscis in one of the flowers, which can reach 6" (15cm) diameter. With about 2% of the images capturing moths, I usually don't stay to watch "live", but rather use a timer to capture them by chance. I happened to be there for the visit for one, though, and over 30 seconds captured it feeding in 6 frames shown at right. The numbers in the frames are the number of seconds after the first frame was taken...



In our neighborhood, we're known as "the cat people", currently with 8 of them sharing the house with us. But we lost a couple early in the year. Pixel and Hootie were both over 15 years old, and led good healthy lives (post from 21 February). The images at left are from years ago and were Photoshopped by Melinda as a cat intro on the blog. Most of the new crop of kitties don't have mug shots like these, but these vintage cats have them. At right, we also had to give up Spitz this Fall. I had high hopes for him, as he is a great cat, but he was FIV+ and when we tried to introduce him to our family, he would attack the other cats - definitely not allowed! We gave him a good chance, but it didn't work out. He is currently at Hope Animal Shelter and available for adoption to an only-cat household (21 December).


My buddy Chuck figured in my learning some new skills this year. I had asked him to go on a short flight around western Pima County early in the year in search of views of the mountains on Baja across the Sea of Cortez. We could barely make out the sea, let alone the mountains across them, but had fun with other stuff. At left is a 2-frame mosaic of the cramped side-by-side seating in the plane as we taxied out to the strip at Ryan Field. We flew past my former employer Kitt Peak both ways, and on the return I captured this infrared view of the Observatory atop it. The IR shows vegetation as white, so it can be tough to spot the domes among the vegetation, but is an interesting view from the air. The IR also penetrates haze better with the longer wavelengths, so can be very useful for aerial views. Both of these are from the 16 March post.



The skills I developed from this trip included learning how to make anaglyph 3D images. Since many of the shots I took from the plane were in quick succession, when combined with the plane's motion as baseline, some amazing 3D images could be made. There is a reasonably easy, about 5 step process in Photoshop that is easy to apply so that depth can be seen with the commonly available red/blue glasses. Here are a couple of my favorites from that first plane ride with Chuck, so grab your red/blue 3D glasses!  At left, as we first passed Kitt Peak on its south side, a pair of shots a couple seconds apart reveal depth throughout the Observatory. And on the return trip, a wide pair of shots shows not only Kitt Peak in stereo, but all the canyons reaching back to Baboquivari in the distance! These are from the 24 March post.


I was a anaglyph nut the rest of the year, a few of the best appearing here. As long as you have a baseline where you can image the same object, you can create the 3D stereo image. I put it to good use flying to the Midwest as we passed the Mount Graham Observatories. By taking a pair of images a few seconds apart, both stereo on the mountain and cloud deck can be seen - even when going 400mph! The image off Graham at left was from the 4 August post. And as well as it works with macroscopic objects like mountaintop observatories, it also works with small objects like shells on a beach. On our Christmas return to Rocky Point, Mexico, I used a macro lens and a monopod set to the minimum height. Swinging the camera a couple inches using the monopod as a pivot works perfectly to keep focus and scale (26 December post).


In June I was able to catch the last 2 nights of the 2015 Grand Canyon Star Party, keeping my 25-year attendance record intact! While still on the anaglyph subject, I tried my hand on a variety of subjects. When you want depth several miles away (like on a plane for distant scenes), the baseline needs to be 100 meters or more. At left is a color image pair of Isis Temple. At right, I repeated the technique on Bright Angel Canyon using the IR camera. The B&W images seem to work better with the red/blue images. I've found that trying to image strongly colored objects, particularly if they are red (like the Canyon) or blue can introduce strange viewing effects. The other defect introduced for these "hyperstereos" is that since it takes a finite amount of time to walk the baseline distance, objects can move (like people or cars in urban scenes), and in this case, with the low sun angle, you can detect slight shadow creep between frames (both from 25 June post).


So yes, I did make the Grand Canyon for 2 days. I started the event in 1990, and while I've retired from organizing, I'm gratified by the excellent job that Jim O'Connor and the Park staff are doing in promoting and supporting the event. It brings a sense of pride when so many thousands of the public are exposed to dark skies there. We continue to get excellent support from amateur astronomers too. At left, Jim Palmer offered to take photos with visitor's cell phones of the crescent moon through his telescope. At right, after the observing was winding down, I talked Bernie Sanden into putting my 16mm fisheye on his 6D camera to record the rising Milky Way. In the 25 second (!) exposure, it also captured the green glow of airglow near the horizon.

Image by Stan Honda

One of the year's highlights was a visit from back east by photographers Ken Spencer and Stan Honda. I helped coordinate some activities and together with fellow local Mike Terenzoni, we toured a few places around southern Arizona. At left is a selfie taken by Stan from the enclosure of the Large Binocular Telescope on Mount Graham. That is me at right, Stan in black, Elliot, our engineer/tourguide, Ken, Mike, and the two astronomers for the night. We were allowed to stay for a few hours after sunset, taking photos from around and inside the telescope enclosure - having a grand time (28 April). At right is a group shot I took as we spent time on Kitt Peak a night or two later. This is a B&W IR shot near sunset as we self-toured the place with the 4 meter telescope in the background (May 19th).




One of the interests I had in our tours was borrowing Ken's camera, another Canon 6D. I took some frames with it from inside the LBT enclosure, and compared it to my best with the venerable Canon 20Da a few years earlier. The new 6D had almost no noise in comparing the images, shooting at ISO 6400 compared to the noise snowstorm in my 20Da at ISO 1600 (that comparison on 9 May). This image appeared on the blog April 29th - a 1 minute exposure with the 16mm fisheye!

Speaking of big scopes, buddy Roger Ceragioli and I volunteered for an open-house evening on Kitt Peak, one of the side benefits was looking through the WIYN 3.5 meter! Here we examined the planet Jupiter before sunset. The enclosure is so small, this is a 6-frame mosaic assembled to show it all (5 May).



While it seems as though I didn't get out for many long nights of observing, reviewing the results posted, I did get out a lot, but mostly I was home before bedtime. These shorter nights while limiting in my observing program, had me home to assist Melinda if she needed it. The year started with a bright comet. I came down with a bout of pneumonia and was actually in the hospital for a few days. I wasn't sure I'd get out to see the best of comet Lovejoy C/2014 Q2. I felt like I was an escaping prisoner when I talked Melinda into going out for a couple hours to image it near the Pleiades Star cluster at left. Shown is 15 minutes of exposure with an 85mm lens (19 January). Two weeks later, I went out again as it passed a galaxy and star cluster, shooting this time with a 135mm lens with 20 minutes of exposure.


The new year also brought a new observing accessory - a new van! My former venerable '88 got rear-ended while stopped at a red light. The insurance company totaled it out with a grand payout of $550! I cashed in some chips and replaced it with a '05 model, shown here in the front yard...

Besides Comet Lovejoy, which was its first observing trip, there was another interesting comet in 2015 - Comet SOHO C/2015 D1. Discovered by a satellite that monitored the near-sun environment, it spotted the comet diving into the sun, but lost its snowball of a nucleus, resulting in a "ghost comet" - only a remnant sprig of a tail. I took a chance it might be observed and spotted it on the 8th of March (9 March post). In 22 minutes of stacked exposures with the 135 lens, it looks like a little Cheshire cat mustache!

Some observing projects didn't require leaving the yard! One project requiring 6 months to complete, included taking an image of the sun with earth at both at its perihelion and aphelion distance (closest and farthest distance). The difference in size amounts to a little over 3%, which is easily observed when doing a comparison like this. Ironically, the sun is closest to the earth in Winter and further in Summer - of course, the distance has little effect on the earth's temperature... Interestingly, the images, taken 6 months apart, both had large sunspot groups at the same solar longitude. See the 7 July post for more info.

Also in July, we had a 2 day break in the monsoon rains and I tried imaging Pluto from the back yard, even as the spacecraft New Horizons was racing towards a flyby. Not knowing if I could spot it from town, I at least tried, and it was quite easy! Shown at right (13 July post), I used the anaglyph techniques to tint the 10 July image blue and the 11 July image red (click for the full-size image to see colors).


September 27 brought us a total lunar eclipse - the last one we'll see for a few years. I set up in the back yard to catch some images. The early stages were easily recorded as it happened right after sunset, with the full moon rising in partial eclipse - the left image taken from our back alley (28 September post).

A few weeks ago we enjoyed a daytime occultation of Venus (moon passing in front of it). Unfortunately we had some clouds partially obscuring it until a few minutes before, and I was barely able to catch it just before Venus popped out of view (7 December post).




Another night I was able to get out for a few hours, I headed west to the western slopes of Kitt Peak, where I set up my tracking platform. Using a wide-angle lens (14mm Samyang), I shot a 3-frame vertical mosaic of the western sky. In February, the Zodiacal Light is prominent as it reaches almost straight up to join in to the Mikly Way near the Pleiades. There are many objects visible in the frame, so am including a labeled version at right. Besides 4 planets (don't forget the Earth!), there is a comet (Lovejoy), a couple galaxies, and some nice constellations too. Interestingly, the blue lights out in the desert are water stations places by humanitarian organizations as many illegals try crossing the desert out in the Indian reservation there.






One of my projects was to rebuild my 11"Newtonian telescope. Effectively, I replaced the big guide scope with a smaller auto-guider with digital camera, making it much lighter. At left it is shown in its inaugural outing at friend Pat's place down in Benson, illuminated by a red flashlight. The new auto-guider is that little white cylinder atop it. It shows good promise - at left is 4 minutes of total exposure on the Pleiades cluster. The cluster is known for its embedded dust cloud, though it appears that the cluster happens to be moving through the dust clouds, and was not formed from it...




On a different night (7 November) at Pat's place, we witnessed a brilliant Trident missile launch from a submarine off the California coast. The spherical shell structure was brighter and visually quite distinct - amazingly so from 600 miles! It seemed to take forever to get a camera out, on the tripod and focused and I missed the brightest part... The missile itself is still visible headed downrange at the white jet to right of the bluish center (likely an artifact of the first stage separation.

And back in August (23 August post), I took a 5-frame mosaic of one of my favorite objects, the Pipe Nebula in Ophiuchus. Using the 200mm lens, it retains good resolution, yet the mosaic provides a nice field of view.



I'll close out the year with some of my adventures on Mount Lemmon Highway - one of my favorite places for not only catching the Kitt Peak Solstice alignment, but the view from Babad Do'ag (irreverently referred to as "Bad Dog") is hard to beat! Case in point is a single-shot with the camera kit lens set to 60mm to record the crescent moon over the lights of Tucson with Kitt Peak and Baboquivari back-illuminated by late twilight glow (14 November post).

And speaking of the solstice sunset alignment, at right is a gif of the 17 December sunset, with images taken at 3 second intervals. While I'm happy with the sequence, the gif has some artifacts I don't care for.


And that was my favorite moving image of the year, until post-Christmas I went sunset chasing again, generating this version from 2-second interval sequence on 27 December. To avoid the artifacts, I uploaded a movie clip to youtube:




So in all, a good year - lots of adventures and fun along the way. Hopefully we can get thru the cancer thing and spend more time feeling better and getting out. Perhaps we'll see you along the way!