Wavy Wispies?

One thing I've been able to adhere to at "Ketelsen East" is my daily bike ride. In 12 days so far in July, I've gotten in 10 rides for a total of 105 miles! Mostly I bike the mile to a local park with a nice 1 mile loop to get in at least 5 miles or so, then jump on the bike path along the Fox River for more hill work and a little variety. But today I noticed something different!

As an astronomer and observer of nature, I've seen all sorts of clouds, but today was different - wavy clouds filling up the eastern sky! Fortunately I had my phone (tracks my bike rides) handy to take some photos. Kinda weird, eh? The foreground is River Bend Community Park, about a mile up the hill from me, and you can see it is a nice place to bike. But the whispies did not look like any clouds I've seen. I think the giveaway is the bluish nature of them.

The weathermen have been pointing out that some of the haziness we've been seeing has been due to forest fires across the border in Manitoba and Ontario Canada, and I suspect this is smoke from those fires. By afternoon they had moved off, the sky turning completely clear, so obviously the wind moved them out of the area. But they sure were striking for a while!

Spring Is Interrupted for this Wintry Break!

Returned home late Saturday from an excellent Ebertfest film festival - likely in an upcoming blog post. Then awoke Sunday morning for falling snow! My immediate reaction was to go out to catch some Spring flowers in a fresh coating of snow, but it didn't stop! It literally snowed all day, nearly to sunset. A nice, slushy snow just perfect for snowballs!


I went out a number of times to catch the flowers, mostly daffodils and blue scilla as the snow blanketed them. The crocus are long finished, and there wasn't much else around in my yard. But it kept falling and falling... I wouldn't have dreamed enough would come down to bury everything, but then it did!


By late in the day it had slowed, and even stopped for periods, but then picked up. I figured there was about 6" of accumulation, but the official St Charles numbers were than 8.3" had fallen! In the scilla shot at left, you might spot my footprints as I tromped through the scilla patch. And at right a red trillium is barely recognizable in its blanket...


The next morning dawned clear and bright. The weatherman advised that "you can shovel the snow yourself, or wait a few hours for nature to do it for you"! Sure enough, temps in the 50s erased all but a few bits by mid-afternoon!  At left is the view of the Fox River from my back yard, and at right, Canadian Geese footprints preserved in snow...


I perhaps should have done a time-lapse of the snow disappearing, but was content just recording the flowers re-appearing after the 24-hour blanket of snow had dissipated. All indications are that the Winter break was brief and Spring's arrival will now continue!

Desert Snow!

People have many misconceptions about the Southwestern Desert.  It is NOT like the Sahara with seemingly endless dunes of drifting sands like the Sahara!  It is actually  quite a diverse ecosystem with plants and animals found nowhere else!  And while drier than where you can grow corn in the Midwest, Tucson gets about 10" of rain per year, and actually, local Indians used to grow corn crops since half our rain comes in the summer rainy season!

We also have a secondary rainy season thru the Winter, and occasionally, storms that pass through come down from the Gulf of Alaska, resulting in below-freezing temperatures and often snow up in the higher elevations (over 9,000 feet) ringing Tucson! Tucson itself, relatively low at 2500 feet elevation rarely gets snow, perhaps once every two years or so. But a couple weeks ago, it happened! I had a doctor's appointment and witnessed that it snowed in Tucson for over 3 hours, but because the ground was well above freezing, we didn't get any accumulation... The flakes came down in huge conglomerations or clumps - I witnessed a few over 2" diameter! When they are that large they land with a splat! The view of my "Old-Man Cactus" at left is affectionately called "Bernie"!



The next day, up for a drive, a friend joined me for a road trip up to Globe about 100 miles north of Tucson. While a drive to 9,000 foot Mount Lemmon would have been more impressive, the road was likely still closed to keep people out while it was being cleared. The road north moves around the Catalina Mountains, climbing to 5,000 feet going through Oracle, then dipping into the San Pedro Valley before climbing another snowy range before descending into Globe, an old Mining town... The day dawned perfectly clear, transforming the view of the Catalinas to the north of town quite spectacular. At left is the view from the south, with saguaro cacti dominating the foreground. By the time I circled the Catalinas to pick up my friend, the view of the north side (at right) down a residential street was even more spectacular!


Since Rancho Vistoso (my friend's neighborhood) was much higher in elevation than Tucson, we saw snow all the way to the 25 miles to Oracle. From there the elevation fell down into the San Pedro River Valley, so the striking photo at left, taken from just past Oracle, shows snow where we were, the snow-free valley, then the snow covered range on the other side.


It had been years since I'd been on highway 77, so much of it was new to me, including a new Indian Casino - Apache Sky, which I've just been hearing about... Of course, climbing the next range brought a new appearance of snow and there was a good 12" or 14" where the elevation peaked! Unfortunately the snow plows hadn't come back to clean off the pulloffs, so we parked dangerously close to the highway and waded through nearly knee-deep very wet snow!


It was fun, and all the tourists we saw were having a good time playing in the snow. Interestingly, we helped an elderly woman lay down on the snow and make her personal snow angel, shown at left. She needed help getting up too, and we took a group photo of their trio with her creation...

The trip down to Globe for a side trip to a rock shop and a quick brunch at a burger place was anti-climactic by comparison. We made a beeline for home to make an appointment, but was a fun day to play!

Eclipse!

Some of you heard we had a lunar eclipse Sunday night (20 Jan, 2019)... Of course it was hyped by the Internet to be the Super-Blood-Wolf Moon, as if just calling it a lunar eclipse wouldn't be as exciting! Well, you will get no embellishments here... Total lunar eclipses are always fun to look at, and lead once upon a time to my second published image - in the Des Moines Register no less, way back in 1975!

So I'm back in Arizona again, usually the bastion of clear blue skies, but in the week here the sun has only made rare appearances, and the forecast for eclipse evening was depressing to say the least! At least the high temperature that day was 79! It was perfectly clear at "Ketelsen East" should I have observed it from there, but the temperature at eclipse time was -5F! Blue sky and thin clouds thickened as sunset approached in Arizona, but always willing to take a chance, drove out to a dark-sky site that the Tucson astro club used to use a couple decades ago - Empire Ranch, about 40 miles SE of Tucson. I wasn't much interested in the partial phases, but sky looked to be mostly clear with only about half of the moon showing.


I set up my Polarie tracking mount - a simple tracker for camera-only use - no tracked telescopes for this eclipse. I did set up my big binoculars for a visual look occasionally. With the moon still partially lit by the sun, a 44-degree halo was apparent and I took a few shots of that before totality started. Totality finally came and while impressive visually, the slightest magnification showed the effects of thin clouds. The photo at left shows the view with a normal lens - the overexposed pink spot is the eclipsed moon, and M44, the Beehive Cluster is to its left and constellation Gemini above in a 30 second exposure. The thin clouds made the stars misty - showing the color differences more clearly. The two bright stars above the moon - Pollux, the lower, is cooler and more yellow than Castor, the upper one...


I tried a couple lens combinations, but again, the clouds made getting anything worthwhile difficult, so decided to stick with wide-angle lenses, finally choosing my relatively new-to-me Sigma 15mm fisheye lens, taking a 30 second exposure every 40 seconds... The exposure was perfect for showing the Winter Milky Way when the clouds parted enough to show it! And all the grand constellations - Orion, Gemini, rising Leo to the far left were visible, as well as the brightest star Sirius (other than the sun) to lower center, and the Hyades and Pleiades star clusters in Taurus at upper right are evident. The yellow light glow are reflected from the cities of Sierra Vista to the lower left, and Nogales, AZ to lower right. I ended up with about 40 frames, extending from about 15 minutes before the end of totality to about 15 minutes afterwards, so decided to put them in a little time lapse using Moviemaker, after minimal processing of each frame. The 7 second loop was repeated 3 times, and the result was then uploaded to Youtube for you to look at here:





If you want any more than that wide-field view, please refer to the last eclipse visible from here, back in September of 2015! Like I said, you don't need to hype it any more than what it really is - a lunar eclipse! The next one fully visible across the country isn't until March of 2025 (some partly visible before then), so a good long wait for the next one to be high in the sky!

Far and Near...

As my time at "Ketelsen East" winds down, I still keep my eyes open for photo opportunities even in the midst of Winter. And while I tell people I can't really do astronomy with the skies so bright from the light pollution of Chicago, I still look up. After all, a month ago I did manage to shoot a comet next to the Pleiades in the back yard! Unfortunately, the bane of astronomers in the Midwest are mosquitos in the Summer and in Winter, temperatures can get frigid! Even so, one of the prettiest views in winter are the prominent constellations seem through the naked trees. Shown at right here is Orion visible through the bare oak trees just a few steps from my front door. This is a single 13 second exposure with the kit zoom lens set to 28mm and F/4.  Any longer of an exposure and the sky was way overexposed...



That very night, while it was under freezing, it wasn't really frigid. But I did note on the weather forecast that evening that there was likely going to be morning fog. Well, for some reason I didn't sleep well that night, so got up at the crack of 8am and stepped out to find a very impressive display of frost on the downed oak leaves in the yard. So dutifully I got out my newish "super macro" lens, the Canon MP-E 65mm with the ring flash mounted in the front for some hand-held focus-stack images.

Now I often mention "focus-stacking". The depth of field of macro lenses are quite narrow, so to extend the part of the field that is in focus, several-to-many frames are taken with slightly different focus settings, or lens positions, and Photoshop or other software can combine only the parts of the frame that is in sharp focus. For example, at left is a 7-frame focus stack, and at right is a single frame from the sequence that shows how narrow the depth of focus actually is! See how only the upper part of the frame at right is sharp. Photoshop does a great job at combining all the sharp parts of the frame as seen at left.


Some of the frost photos were quite astounding! There was about a 3-meter square patch in the center of the yard that showed needle structure. I DO NOT know how they form - I guess I need to look around on crystal formation! In some of the frames the "needles" appear tubular or hollow, and in some they have a general hexagonal hollow form. Those are visible at left.

And at right one of the stunning images of spikes emanating from a single point, and quite large - over a centimeter in diameter!



I first stopped at a moss patch that never gets much Summer sun. While not as impressive as the larger spikes I found a few minutes later, they are interesting in their own way.

All of these are combinations of 7 to 11 frames to extend the range of focus, and are all "focused" manually by hand-holding them. It was my first time attempting this and as you can see, came out ok! Some I used some combination of flash and the rising sunlight.

Of course, as soon as the rising sun cleared the horizon, since the temps were barely under freezing, all the crystals melted quickly, and the show was over!

I present the rest without comment, other
than I will certainly keep an eye out for such events in the future!

Holiday Season at "Ketelsen East"!

A few years back I used to give a year-end review of the highlights and lowlights of the preceding year.  My blog output has been so low the last couple years that I saw no point in doing a review. Last year only produced 27 posts, about half of my 2017 output, which was about half of my 2016 output! But on the optimistic side, though I only had one post in July and another in August, the year ended strong with 6 in December! So with today's start, I'm hoping the surge continues into the New Year!

I've been at "Ketelsen East" for almost 3 weeks, and as I posted a few days ago, got in a Carolina road trip early-on. It was quiet holiday with only a couple family gatherings, otherwise have been working on a couple projects at home and mostly hanging out watching the cold weather outside! Got in a single bike ride when it hit 50F one of my first days here, otherwise have been a slug!

But I'm always looking for photo ops, and while the winter scenes are pretty monochromatic, found a couple of interest just the last few days. Temps have hovered within a handful of degrees around freezing, so snow one day, then rain, then snow again! At least it hasn't made driving difficult, and the fresh snow a couple days ago, plus the clear skies made some interesting shadows on the boat dock a few yards from my house.


It seems strange to have a river without boats on it! Has been a weird year - high water and some minor flooding through the spring and summer has restricted boat traffic much of the warm season, and now these hidden rules I know little about, evidently restrict watercraft from even being in the water, so the river looks naked without something running it! This shot down the river was taken a bit before sunset shortly after the shadow pics above were taken...



Then yesterday, New Year's eve, the rain came and we got a goodly amount, melting most all traces of the snow we had on the ground. I had to make a trip into the city (more about that in a future post), and drove in moderate showers over the course of the hour-long trip in and back out again. Didn't slow down the crazy drivers much here - everyone still drove 5mph over the speed limit with showers, mist and fog, so no traffic delays! When I got home I saw the berries from this bush adjacent to my parking area (unidentified), with their bright color and rain drops abundantly apparent! This is a 6-frame focus stack (combines exposures with slightly different focus settings to extend range of focus). with the 100mm macro when rain paused momentarily.




After a quiet night, woke up to no snow, but soon noticed a little accumulation this morning. Taking note, the snow was barely visible - tiny little flakes hardly seen, but enough to accumulate. I got the "big" macro (Canon MP-E 65mm) out to look for crystal structure, but none was seen. Shown here is a "still life" I found atop the AC cover where an acorn cap had fallen. The macro makes it much more interesting as it started filling with snow pellets - no other word for them - they look like little snowballs with no crystal structure... About 90 minutes later I went out again, and in the further accumulation it looked noticeably different - at right! These were taken at the lowest magnification (about 1X) and used a ring flash in front of the lens for shadow-free illumination.





Finally I cranked up the magnification to 3X or so (max is 5X!), and shot the snow pellets on my car windshield. Nice structure is noted, but little of the crystal variety... Of course, now that I've got the right equipment on hand, snowflakes will be rare!

Here for a while yet and am still looking for objects of interest!

Ho Hum, Another Sunset...

As you know, we get our share of spectacular sunsets in Arizona. It has something to do with the clarity of the air, and for the western horizon to be clear to enable the setting sun to shine through and illuminate clouds at the observer's location. This one was from last Wednesday, the very evening I went out and photographed the second set of images of Mars and Neptune. Once the clear strip at sunset came over, I headed west of town to shoot the night time targets.

But that sunset! It was a sunset for the ages! If you aren't ready they can pass in an instant, so not much time to prepare if you aren't ready. This time I had collected my camera in preparation of going out to observe, but didn't have the right lens on when I grabbed it and went out to the cul-de-sac in front of the house. I had my 100mm macro, a reasonable telephoto - difficult to shoot a needed wide-angle view.

Well it was spectacular, so as a compromise, rather than run inside to change lenses, I did a mosaic - Took about 5 photos, then moved up a field and took 5 more, then later assembled them in Photoshop to appear as a single image. It worked well, as you can see here. Sometimes the software gets lost and can't combine them, or distort them wildly, but it really did look pretty much just like shown here. Enjoy!


At left is one of the individual frames from a slightly earlier sequence than went closer to the horizon...

Monsoon Season Winds down!

I returned from the Midwest a few weeks back and was afraid that I'd missed the blooming season for the cereus repandus cacti on the east side of the house. Fortunately, as I rounded the corner, I saw about 20 buds that would provide about a week of blooms. The are remarkable flowers, attaining nearly 6" (15cm) diameter, with the blooms opening fully well after sunset, and on their way closed shortly after the sun hits them. So they depend on night time pollinators, and it has been a hobby of mine to document this "night shift" every year. Here is a link to some of my favorite pollinator  posts the last few years...


My first Friday night back I had gone to Phoenix to attend an astronomy club meeting, and returned after midnight to find 7 (!) flowers open, so set up my old Canon XSi (with built-in flash) to take a photo every 20 seconds through the remainder of the night. Starting about 1am, the camera ran unattended until about 5:30 when I went and stopped it - it was already getting light and was surrounded by bees, which take over after the moths stop coming. So yes, there were over 800 photos to examine! As shown above, the full frame covered 2 blooms to see if they worked them sequentially. It turns out I never saw one on the rearward blossom.

It was a long wait for the first visitor - the shot above at right was after 3am, 2 hours after the start. Hard to tell if the flash startles them or not. Some only stay for one flash, some for several. The one at left came only 2 minutes later, but I don't think it is the same one - the latter looks larger and I can't match any of the fine patterns... Then, almost 2 hours later one fed for 3 of the consecutive exposures. Looking much smaller than the moths in the other exposures, I have no explanation. I don't believe they grow as they age, so am mystified a little by their apparent smaller size. It looks to be the same species as the markings are nearly identical, the exception is that the above have 3 orange spots down the side and these smaller ones have 5...


A few minutes later I caught the corner of a wing, and the flash silhouette of another moth, so I'm counting 4 visits even though this one is marginal! About 30 minutes later the first honeybees came along and are the last to have their way with the flowers before they close shortly after sunrise. But even among these bees there are some interesting variations! At left is one of the few that had it's "fannypack" stuffed full with pollen already! Note I had repositioned the camera with macro lens for these shots with the ring flash.



The oddballs continued with the appearance of a large, black, fuzzy bee in one frame - I think is a female carpenter bee. In addition there was a small strange moth that also appeared in one frame shown at right. It appears green with brown trim. Unfortunately it wasn't in sharp focus, so remains a mystery - wasn't able to find anything close in Google images...



Finally shown here is the result of a night of pollinators... At left is shown the resultant stamen where the pollen is deposited and must adhere with a sticky substance. Individual pollen grains are resolved in this full-resolution 15-frame focus stack. Meanwhile the anther that normally is loaded with pollen look like bald, yellow raisins. At the start of the night they are fuzzy and loaded up with pollen grains. Make sure you click on the image to see it at full scale.

And here is a flower a few nights earlier that shows what the flower parts look like early in the evening, when the stamen (green fingers) are fresh and devoid of pollen at left, and at right the anthers are shown loaded with pollen...

So the bloom season has now ended, and continues again early next summer. The desert provides few blossoms for pollinators in the fall, so not much of interest coming up, but I'll be sure to be out next summer!