Mr October!

When I was back at "Ketelsen East" during the Fall, while out enjoying breakfast with Melinda's buddy Sallie, I happened to notice a copy of the St Charles Daily Herald open for restaurant patrons to enjoy. I noticed there was a "calendar contest" for local residents, with a deadline towards the end of October. Never having even seeing a copy of the paper or previous calendars, I wasn't sure what sort of images they were looking for, but the blurb said they wanted "photos illustrating life in the Northwest and West suburbs".


Well, I had a couple favorite macro subjects and submitted them the night of the deadline. They said winners would be contacted by December 6th. Not expecting much from the special-interest macro images, I waited...


But miracles of miracles, I got an email from "Kat" from the paper stating I'd won! No details, but my "prize" was a copy of the calendar and while their subscribers got theirs in the Sunday, 17 December edition, they wanted to send me a copy. Since I was in Tucson, they mailed it here. I suspect it passed me as I was driving back to the Midwest this recent trip. But it was waiting for me upon my return yesterday! I'm Mr October, and my alternate submission was in the last page of "honorable mentions"!




The "dewdrop on Dandelion" is likely my favorite image of all time, so was hoping that was the one chosen, and indeed it was, though I had an early indication the alternate - "Aphid on Dandelion" was the one they were using. Interesting that both are of dandelions, yet, I've not seen any around the house(the camp might be spraying, or perhaps because of the Fox flooding the last couple years) the last few years... The "dewdrops" were taken in November of 2016, and the aphid in May of 2015... No, I do NOT know how you can get a copy of the calendar, since they were distributed free to subscribers. But for your viewing convenience, I include copies of the winning images here. 


So I had a nice holiday surprise, but didn't get rich from it! Although they did spell my name right! Got to be thankful for that!

Colorful Coin

Under the category of "what the heck is that" is this coin I received in change the other day... The front side (left) is normal, but the back is in color! I didn't think much of it, figured someone was doodling with fingernail polish, and didn't think much of it. I finally dug it out of my change jar yesterday and took a good look at the obverse side. Shown at right, it appears someone took cares to color at least part of the design - trying to stay inside the lines, anyway... I took out my "supermacro" (Canon MP-E 65mm) to document here. The upper images here are at the lowest magnification I can get - about 1:1, or life-size on the sensor. The quarter just quite does not fit in the field of view. But even here you can see that the scene isn't a straight painting, rather it appears to be a multi-layer screen print. Note the screen dots on the details of the woman and what she is carrying - indicative of some sort of a screening or printing procedure.

I was not aware that this was a "thing", but a quick internet search showed them available at Amazon and Ebay for as little as $2 each when bought as a complete set. They appear to be legal tender, which is likely how I received it, when someone needed a quarter and spent this for whatever purchase was needed...

The close-ups here were taken with the same lens at about 3X magnification (scale at bottom is in millimeters. Note especially on the "Pennsylvania" detail, there appears to be a slight registration error of about a half millimeter. At right you can also see the barely-visible E Pluribus Unum through the layer of color at bottom...

All-in-all, an interesting circumstance to run into this item. They do not appear to be common, as after posting last night on FB, most have indicated they've never seen one! One fellow knew someone that collected them, but were new to another half dozen commenters. But they are out there and another reason to pay attention to your money!

All Night Long!

I've been back at "Ketelsen West" for nearly a couple weeks. When I make plans to be out of Tucson in July, everyone always asks how I can miss the monsoon rains - so welcome to the desert dwellers. Well, I miss the start of the 2+ month rainy season here, but also a lot of the hottest weather and the wondering when the first storms will arrive... The one thing that I do hope I don't miss is the flowering of my cereus repandus - night-blooming cereus cacti! They typically start their spectacular blooming shortly after the monsoons start and last through most of the rains till it cools off the end of September. And while the flowers are indeed impressive, what is fun and "sporting" is capturing the pollinators that inevitably come by to feed on the flower's nectar and in that process, distribute pollen among other plants and blooms. I was in luck - shortly after my return, a quartet of flowers bloomed the same night - on the same arm of the cactus! At left is how it appeared right about sunset - the 4 telltale buds were swollen and about to bloom the next few hours. At right, by 10pm, they were open and awaiting action!



But in recent years, I've enjoyed capturing the rustic sphinx moth pollinators. They appear randomly during the night, perhaps drawn by the very subtle (to me anyway) odor of the flowers, or something else that tells them there is food here... The challenge is always to capture as many as their flighty visits, without taking a million photos! Of course, I could sit there and man the camera myself, pushing the button as they visit to feed. Likely also it would be straightforward to rig up something to do it automatically as they come by. I was able to capture a few of the earliest visitors manually, as they started visiting shortly after the flowers opened. With my head-mounted red light, they buzzed my head as they approached, seemingly as large as a bat as it came past me to feed. There was no missing their approach, and even during their stay, I could see the cat's-eye reflection of my red lamp from their eyes! The most fascinating thing to me is there nearly 15cm (6") long proboscis, so tried to take their photo before they landed on the flower. The results here demonstrate that successful plan.



But I was not prepared to stay flower-side all night. I increased my chances by setting up the camera so all 4 flowers were in the image. That way, if any moths came to any flower, I'd document its visit. Also, I used the on-camera flash (on my 10-year old Canon XSi) to illuminate the scene. Taking a photo every 20 seconds (3 per minute, 180 per hour!) I was hoping to catch a few moth visits! 5.5 hours later, the camera and flash were still going after nearly 1,000 photos! The next day I downloaded the all and went thru it frame-by-frame - I had caught over 80 images of moths! That included 4 frames where there were 2 moths in the frame - an absolute first for me! They weren't consecutive frames either, so weren't the same 2 moths hanging out together! These two frame sets show the 4 images with moth pairs in them...


What is most amazing about these moth images is the length of their probiscii! At least when they are flying around the cereus repandus flowers they appear to be fully extended. I believe I've seen images showing them coiled up when not in use, but flying around with something extended that is larger than your wingspan must be dangerous, if not at least a little risky! The image at left is quite incredible! Be sure to click on it to load the full resolution image...

And some of the moths dig so deeply into the flowers. Either they are a little smaller, or perhaps they've got a shorter or broken proboscis, and need to go deeper to feed. Check out the image at right - can barely see the moth body...


So this particular night (19 August) was a particularly busy one! I had stopped the camera at 4:30am, but stopped by a couple hours later to do some close-ups to compare to some I had taken earlier in the evening. At left is a "before" photo showing the abundance of pollen and the still-green stigma and pollen-covered anthers...

At right is a close-up of the stigma after a busy night of pollination. You can see the moths have transferred a lot of the little round pollen grains, and it appears that the moths have also left behind an abundance of their scales - the feather-looking filaments that appear to be stuck to the stigma. Note how bare and naked the anthers are, now devoid of pollen...

At 6:00 the sun was just coming up and the flowers were about to close. I set up the camera once more with the timer to take a photo every 8 minutes for 3 hours. Rather than make a time-lapse, I made a GIF, shown here demonstrating the rapid closing of the flowers once the sunlight hits them.

It looks like the bud/bloom cycle continues, as does the monsoon rains. Will keep my eyes open for more photo opportunities!

Hints of Spring!

Am back to the Midwest at "Ketelsen East" to enjoy the emergence of Spring! It looks like I arrived with perfect timing - there are mostly shades of brown and gray, trees bare, temps still definitely on the cool side after Tucson temps have been flirting with the 90s! But there are definite hints that the new growth of Spring isn't far away! Just a couple meters from the house, in fact, growing up in bits of asphalt piled high by the snowplow clearing the roads in my absence, are some beautiful crocus flowers. Shown here at left is the biggest plant - barely reaching 3" (8cm) tall, so I needed the macro lens for these shots!




And as soon as I shoot the yellow crocus above I notice some slightly smaller white crocus too! I had to check with my neighbor Elaine on the ID - I've not sure I've been early enough to catch these beauties in years past. She claims she has some purple crocus in her yard, but I've not been there to catch those yet.  I like the gentle pale yellow trim on these white flowers - they were kind of hard to spot with the brown grass background, but there were quite a few plants scattered about.






As I mentioned, the temps have been cool, and the flowers close up as the temperature drops as sunset approaches. The photo at left (same yellow crocus as above) was taken shortly before sunset, and today, with temps never going much above 40, I think they stayed closed all day! Lows tonight will be 24, so hope they survive the hard freeze tonight - will check on them tomorrow...

Note that most all of these photos were taken with the macro lens, and in order to extend the range of sharp focus at these considerable magnifications, several shots taken at different focus settings were taken and combined in Photoshop. Known at focus-stacking, they can considerably extend the range of sharpness in these photos...







In my searches for other things just poking out of the ground, I thought the bud at left might be the first sprouting of my beloved Trillium, that I spend time shooting every year. But from my first discovery of these sprouts (only about 1/2" tall) to today, they are starting to reveal their blue colors - Blue Scilla, which will carpet my yard blue in a week or two! Click on the right image for the full-size that shows the appearance of blue colors... Will try to keep an eye out for new members of the Spring population!

Its a 3D Solar System!

This is a 3D stereo post - so dig up your red/blue anaglyph glasses! You DO all have some, right? I've got a few hundred pair to give away, but can't afford postage to send them all out to you - let me know how to get them to you if you are lacking!

Anyway, this is a 2-part post! A few stereo pairs from a recent trip to Mexico and a recently released 3D data set from a spacecraft that visited a comet! The later is really incredible, and I had taken a few from the Mexican beach, so decided to combine... I hope you enjoy them. BTW, You REALLY need to have a pair of glasses near your computer! They are often used to present images from NASA craft and are also used on APOD frequently too!


The beach shots are all taken by me using a single DSLR camera (Canon 6D), and in this case, a macro lens was used for the close-up, and these first two shots here were taken with the normal kit lens. In each case, 2 images were taken with a shift between them to provide a baseline. When each is viewed with the appropriate eyeball, 3D stereo results! That is what the red/blue glasses does - allow you to see each image with just one eye for your brain to reassemble. The separation for the normal lens (above) is a couple inches, about what your eye is. For the macro, the distance between photos is less because of the magnification involved. Likely a couple centimeters is sufficient! The 3D really brings out the structure and form of objects - MUCH more clearly than a single 2 dimensional image!


One of my must-reads on the Internet
every day is a stop by the Twitter feed of planetary scientist Emily Lackdawalla. She has very similar interests to my own, and daily reposts links that I'd love to look at, from planetary and astronomical exploration, to pushing her girls into STEM, and seeing what is outraging the working scientists of the day. It is ALWAYS worth a look around! In her efforts to clearly explain the intricate details of planetary missions, both of the robotic spacecraft and the resultant data collected, new data sets are often revealed. Such was the case last week when she reposted a set from a couple years ago of the Rosetta comet mission to the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. It is an incredible data set, with details of distance, time and where on the comet the view is located. And the 3D views of this foreign landscape (a COMET!) is just incredible! There are over 1000 anaglyph stereo pairs presented, these are a couple of my favorites. I love both the wide-field ones here, with mighty jets shooting material outwards as ices melt in sunlight, as well as close-us of mighty ridges and caves that likely hide the jets in the deep shadows...


So take these in and be amazed, then go
to the link below to browse away the day!





Click here on this link to go to the Rosetta 3D anaglyph image collection!

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!