New and Improved, Bigger and Frostier!

The more I use the Canon 100mm macro we
have (non-image-stabilized) and examine the images critically, the more I'm impressed with what it can do!  Last week when we were in Illinois, I was out the morning of the first frost, taking a few pictures.  Well the next morning, it also froze, and I went out again, taking some nice pictures, but since I'd already blogged, figured it would be redundant to show such similar images.  But looking at them closely, they are quite incredible, so am posting again, this time showing the images displayed at somewhat closer to the camera resolution limit (most pictures here and most elsewhere are reduced considerably in resolution).

First up above is a weed (sorry for the non-identifications - all I know is that it isn't grass!) with considerably more frost than formed the night before on the leaf edges.  And even the image at left is downsized some from the full frame.  At right is the same image at nearly the full resolution, with just the slightest touch of unsharp masking.  Note that this shot is a 1/4 second exposure (tripod mounted!) at F/11.  I also took a 1 second exposure at F/22, but interestingly, while the depth of field is better, the sharpest part of the water crystals have lost sharpness due to diffraction effects - interesting, and something to remember!  Click on the image for the full size image - the detail in the crystals is quite nice!

I also had a leaf picture in the previous post, but this one is considerably better.  I don't understand the mechanism of crystal formation, but it is interesting to me that the leaf veins seem to grow more frost than the expanse of flat sections.  At right is a single blade of grass covered with crystals.  Growth rings can be detected in some of them, as well as what might be hexagonal structures in the edges.



Finally, with the heavier frost this morning, this convex leaf surface has considerably more crystal growth than the previous post.  I was just there as the sun was clearing the tree line, which adds another layer of interesting reflections off the crystal faces.  For all the world it looks like a cave grotto full of quartz crystals!  I'm certainly going to look for similar circumstances in the future - I've tried a time or two to go after snowflakes without success, but after these first attempts, it is worthwhile to try again, or perhaps attempt some time-lapses...

Geostationary Satellites!

Space is far from empty.  Especially in the Earth's neighborhood there are lots of objects.  Rare is a twilight while out observing from a dark site when you do not spot a dozen or more satellites moving across the sky.  Fortunately it is not as bad as the movie "Gravity" when a space station or habitable pod is just a few dozen miles away, but in the near-earth environment there are lots of both naked-eye satellites, as well as fainter ones that show up in telescopic or binocular views.

Some of the easiest to photograph, especially from a dark site, are the geostationary satellites.  Mostly communication or weather stations, they orbit precisely every 24 hours over the equator, so an observer on the ground will see these points of light fixed in the sky.  NOT fixed with respect to the stars, but fixed with respect to the ground.  All you need to image them is a tripod and camera and you can spot them because they are fixed with respect to the trailing stars as the earth rotates.  Because of parallax, from northern latitudes they appear to be located south of the celestial equator - from Tucson's 32 degrees latitude, they appear at about -5.5 degrees declination.  A few weeks ago, before our recent Midwest trip, I went out towards the base of Kitt Peak to image some of these  Shown at left here is the result of 50 (!) co-added exposures with a DSLR and 50mm lens running 90 second exposures, pointed a little east (about 10 degrees east of due south).  I had in-camera noise reduction turned on to minimize hot pixels that would confuse identification, so 50X90s=75minutes of exposure over a period of 2.5 hours.  The bright points are the geostationaries - there were over 25 in the full frame, this one is cropped about 25%.  The dashes are the stars that trailed through the frame.  Besides the point like satellites, there are also a large number of trails NOT in the same direction as the stars.  These are geosynchronous satellites - likely rocket boosters or inoperative satellites that have been moved out of the crowded geostationary positions.  They also orbit every 24 hours, but have a slight inclination, so they do not orbit over a single point. 

Many of these geosynchronous orbits trace out a figure 8 shape as seen from the Earths surface if it could be followed for a full 24 hours.  At left in this frame is a close-up of the satellites, taken with my 70-200 zoom (set to 90mm focal length), again, for the full 2.5 hour period.  This one is highly cropped of the right part of the field above, and in it you can see how well aligned the geostationary ones are to the earth as they don't budge much.  The one not in the plane of the others traced out a looping curve in the 2.5 hours of coverage...

The last exposure shown here is one of the single frames with the 50mm lens, cropped pretty tightly from the left side of the first frame above.  Besides the line of geostationaries, there are a trio of geosynchronous satellites visible, one of which (the bottom) that is glinting sunlight to my position.  I picked the observation period (a couple weeks after equinox) that was favorable for catching glints like this, and many of them caught the sun, brightening a lot before they went into the Earth's shadow.  I was able to spot several of them in binoculars, and I'm pretty sure I could see them naked eye.  Certainly the one below left would have been easily visible to the naked-eye during the 10 minutes it was flaring.  Unfortunately, they move so slowly relative to the stars that they are hard to identify only from their appearance, unless you have the advantage of watching the camera display as the frames are coming in.  Interestingly, over heavily populated areas, like the US, they can position and use them with .1 degrees angular separation, which at the geostationary distance of  22,000 miles (36,000km) corresponds to a real separation of about 44 miles (73km).

I'd like to be able to identify some of these, but haven't yet as I need to figure out how to measure the east-west alignment more accurately.  Since these were about 10 degrees east of due south, and we're at about 112 degrees longitude, they are mostly about 102 degrees west longitude.  I'll continue to observe them occasionally, and I encourage you to do the same - it's easy as there are no tracking issues!

Window Sill Still Life

While we're back in Arizona, recovering from
our vacation in Illinois and preparing for chemo, round 4, I'm reviewing pictures I've taken the last 10 days.  While most of my posts from there are usually taken outside, here are a couple taken of interior décor that have collected on our window sills.  At left is the view from our laundry/furnace room of flags and Mason Jars, and at right is the view outside the bathroom of candles, bottles and knickknacks.  While mostly I wanted to record the shapes and colors, it is actually a difficult photographic problem to shoot out the window in daylight as the exterior details overwhelms some of the detail you want to record.  I tried to use High Dynamic Range (HDR) methods to record the frame at different exposure levels to preserve detail, but I ended up using a single frame for the flag exposure, and only 2 frames for the bathroom view.  But "levels" and "curves" were used in Photoshop to bring out what I wanted to show...  I was hoping to record some fall colors out the windows, but only green was still showing...  But as for the layout of the décor itself - didn't touch a thing - what you see is what's actually there!

Phun With Flames!

Seems like whenever we visit our place in Illinois, the pyromaniacs in us come out and we find excuses to stoke a fire in our yard.  We've got a "burn pile" where wood discards from construction projects, fallen branches and leaves make an excuse to have a fire.  At our last visit in July, my RAGBRAI buddies revealed the way-cool Chinese Lanterns, and after nearly a week's search, we finally found and nearly bought-out the supply of an Iowa store (they might be slightly illegal in Illinois...), but again, we've never "pulled the trigger" to send one off...

Tonight, our last night in the Midwest, we had to make an excuse, as we hadn't yet lit the burn pile this trip either.  Melinda had a dinner at a local restaurant with many of her nursing buddies, some of which she hadn't seen in 15 years!  All told, over 15 former co-workers got together at a local Italian place where they spent over 3 hours yakking!  When we got home we looked at each other, and decided it was time to send off one of these little hot-air balloons. 

We walked out into a clearing west of our house - it seemed dead calm, opened the balloon and lit the little wax-covered piece of cardboard.  In a matter of 20 seconds or so it became semi-buoyant and seconds later lifted off from my fingertips.  Interestingly, it went up about 80 feet and then took off towards the east in the undetectable-from-the-ground breeze.  We watched it for about a minute before it disappeared below the tree line from our location. 

We debated why in the world they could be found illegal - what's the worst that could happen sending flaming balloons into the sky?!  It turns out that except for a bit of wire, all parts are biodegradable, and, if sent up while it is calm and the piece of cardboard burns till it goes out, by the time it falls to earth from a couple thousand feet up it should be cool.  We just won't get permission from authorities to send them off - easier to get forgiveness than permission, right?  At a few bucks each, a fun thing to do next time we have company over!

What the Passenger Saw....

We travel frequently, mostly around the continental US.  Since I'm an "observer", I enjoy looking through the window, as you can see some interesting things at 30,000+ feet elevation.  Note also that at 74" tall, sometimes the best seat for looking through the window is the center seat!

Anyway, on our trip here I saw something I'd
never noticed before.  In fact, I wasn't even sure what it was called until I went looking for it on Optics Picture of the Day!  It was a "Subsun", a near-specular reflection of the sun off oriented ice crystals in the clouds.  It had a very similar appearance to how the sun would look reflecting off a body of water, except we were somewhere over New Mexico or Texas, and it was mostly cloudy.  All told, the subsun was visible for only about 5 minutes, but I got a dozen shots of it in that time, all seemingly associated with misty-topped mid-level clouds.  I sent my description and a couple shots to Les Cowley who runs OPOD, and overnight he provided a name, description and links to a few better examples than mine.  And while he indicates they are quite common, I'd never seen them from above anyway...  I've seen sun pillars that are formed from similar crystal alignments, but these were a first for me.  Keep looking up, or down, or whatever direction is available to you!

More Macro - Frosty Morning!

Still in the Midwest - it was clear overnight and with the cold front that passed yesterday, was below freezing for the first time this season, according to the weatherman.  Of course, still no sign of aurora, but with temps in the mid-20s this morning, I stepped out for some frosty photos.  These are literally yards from our door, in the grass and weeds that pass for our lawn, but there were still some interesting ice crystals forming.  These are all taken with the Canon 100mm macro, typically at F/22 for depth of field, which drove the exposures to a quarter second or so in the early morning light...  Click on the images to load the full-resolution images.

Of course, the temperatures didn't stay below freezing for long, supposed to be in the 40s for highs today, but now it is trying to snow - can see it out the window as I write this at noon!  Looks like Tucson is expecting highs near 90F, so quite the difference, but we enjoy the change, and have been taking in the Fall colors here. We've been in a whirlwind of visiting friends and family - Melinda needs her calendar to keep track of who she is meeting for breakfast, lunch and dinner the rest of the week! She is loving it as she is feeling great this week as we enter into cycle 4 of chemo next week...

Fall Through the Macro Lens...

We're back in the Midwest for a few days to visit family, friends, and get away from thinking too much of chemo and the routine of our lives in Tucson!  While it has been in the mid-80s in Arizona, Fall has definitely arrived here in Illinois!  Plus, we've been enjoying the rain here - the monsoon season wasn't very kind to us in Tucson, only an inch and a half all Summer.  So walking through drizzle the other day was a refreshing experience, even though most of the folks around me wondered why I was smiling so much!

While there is some Fall color, I think we're past most of it and a lot of the plants over at the Forest Preserve prairie has been felled by frost.  So I've taken a few walks and tried to capture some of the colors and patterns that catch my eye.  Since we're past the bulk of colors, I've chosen to use the macro to zoom in on close-ups.  Using that lens makes you reconsider a lot of framing choices and really makes you look at tiny details that show up easily with the higher magnification.

The macro is so great at revealing intricate structure, like the veins of a leaf - and I loved the collected raindrops on the oak leaf above, each acting as a little magnifying glass providing a little closer look under each drop!  It makes the use of a tripod almost mandatory to keep image blur to a minimum, especially under the canopy of the woods where some of these were taken - upwards of half second exposures with some of the small apertures required for the depth of field needed...  So I've been having fun seeking out these little jewels as time permits between seeing all the folks we want to see this trip.  Perhaps there will be more!