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!

Fishing for Pollinators!

Back at "Ketelsen West" in Tucson where it is deep into late Spring - the "5th Season" careful observers get here, where it is ungodly hot and made comfortable by the lack of humidity! It is supposed to be 108F this Sunday, yet the humidity will likely be somewhere close to 5%, making it entirely comfortable if you are at least out of the sun...

As for local flora, we are nearly to the end of the Saguaro blooming season, so there is little on the bloomin' calendar till the summer rains start another spurt of desert growth in 5 weeks or so. But wouldn't you know, my cereus repandus on the east wall of my house, spurt out 7 buds on 2 plants last week, and I enjoyed 3 consecutive nights of flowers of a couple per night! The photo at left shows a good number of them (click to enlarge image) about 4 or 5 days before start of blooming. By late afternoon you can spot the ones that are going to open that night, finally opening to their full 5 or 6 inch diameter (!) by 10pm or so. Once the sun hits them the next morning, the show is over and they close, either setting fruit or if un-pollinated, drop off in a few days... At right is a photo of the last night of blooming showing the spectacular flowers.



These flowers are so large and deep that they require pollinators with a long tongue or proboscis to be able to reach the nectar. There is a story where evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin predicted the existence of an unknown pollinator that could reach the bottom of a 12" long flower in Madagascar, and it took 130 years to prove his prediction! For these flowers, one need only wait and they will come to you. My favorite hunting technique is in setting up a camera on a tripod, taking flash photos in the dark on the off chance of catching one. It has worked well except rarely do I catch moths in the early May blooming - my suspicion is that they are not active in the pre-monsoon season... Here at left is shown a great photo I took a few years back of an uncurled proboscis of a rustic sphinx moth as it is about to dive in to feed on nectar. How deep does it go? Well, the photos at right (again, from years ago) show how far in they reach, and you can see their effectiveness as pollinators - they must get covered in it! The fact that it was in 3 consecutive photos indicate it fed for at least 90 seconds...



On Wednesday night I set up the gear and started it about 11:30, and awoke about 5:30 to fetch it. At 2 photos per minute, that corresponded to something over 700 photos. Did I catch any moths this time? YES! Exactly 2, their images shown here left and right. The one at left came in at 20 minutes after midnight, and the one at right came in at 3:07 am. Don't know if the flash scared them off, as they only appeared in a single shot each, but I've spent some nights in the May blooming without capturing a singe one, so am ahead of average in May!



And yet, pollination occurred - I can tell by looking at the stigma to see if pollen has been transferred from the anther... With the macro lens plus extension tubes at 5:30 in the morning, sure enough, it appears the stigma had a good coating of pollen as well as "moth feathers". Make sure to click on the image to show the full resolution. This was a 3-frame focus stack to slightly extend the depth of focus of the exposure...

SO success for the May blooming outing - rare indeed from my earlier excursions to catch anything. But it is always fun to try and see what you will catch. You bet I'll be back in the busier August and September blooming season!

One Night To Shine!

3D anaglyph image!

3D anaglyph image!

Since July and August weather doesn't agree with astronomy (it is our monsoon season, threatening rain most days), one of my favorite activities is chasing the blooms, flowers and pollinators of the array of Cereus repandus cacti we've got growing on the east side of our house. Clicking the above link will take you to some of our earlier posts of these amazing flowers. If the 15cm (6"!) diameter, night-blooming flowers aren't enough to keep your interest, the specialty pollinators that come out at night to feed are amazing too! These top two images here are recent bloomers, shown here as anaglyphs - get out your red/blue glasses to see them in 3D stereo! The right image is unusual - normally as soon as the sun hits them they are on their way to closing - I've got a time-lapse of that!

Days to blooming!

For my one-eyed readers, or those of you who don't have any anaglyph glasses, you can enjoy this image at left. There are usually a pair of blooming seasons per summer - the first one in May with a few blossoms, but the real blooming session appears to be in late July and August, at least in my yard with my variety. We missed the first blooming season when we were in Illinois for a couple weeks, and the latter season was while Melinda was taking the tour of health facilities around Tucson... Fortunately, I would come home late each night to do cat chores, so usually came upon the flowers already open. Interestingly this second season, the flowers either seemed to be 7 or 8 feet off the ground, or down a foot off the dirt, so would either have to get out stepstool and the tall tripod, or lie down on the ground. Fortunately, there was one blossom at the perfect 4 foot (1.2 meter) level that I waited to bloom. Also, once the flower bud was first spotted - a little nub less than 5mm (1/4") across, I started regularly imaging it until it bloomed, as shown at right...


So from the afternoon shot taken earlier in the day, I knew this bloom would blossom that night. I didn't get home till well after 1130, and sure enough it was already wide open and I arranged my camera (Canon XSi - 'cause of the on-camera flash, macro and  about 5cm of extension tubes). Focusing quickly on the center green stigma of the flower - I could see that the pollinating moths had already visited. How could I tell? Well the Stigma was already covered with pollen and some of the hairs and "feathers" of the rustic sphinx moths that normally visited. Look at the image at left, and the same image at full camera resolution at right. While the anthers are still relatively loaded with pollen, with the stigma loaded up (they must be sticky to hold on to pollen and moth hairs) you can see it had been visited the previous 90 minutes the flower had likely been open.

So what does it look like before the moths visit? Glad you asked as a few days earlier I caught one just as it opened before 11pm. Shown at left you can see the stigma is a clean green with anthers fully loaded with pollen just waiting for a passing moth to brush some across it. By early in the morning, I went out to shoot a corresponding macro shot of the stigma after a long night of visiting pollinators. Shown at right is the above flower at 5am. Compared to the images in the preceding paragraph, it looks absolutely furry from moth hairs, and the anthers are pretty much denuded of pollen...



So who did we attract as pollinators this time? Between about midnight to 5am I took pictures every 20 seconds, hoping to accidently capture some pollinators. The 830 frames show exactly 4 visits by rustic sphinx moths, though you will see that one likely visited twice making only 3 moths visiting overnight (also not counting the moths arriving before midnight. In the images at left and right, each of these moths stayed for 2 exposures taken at 20 second intervals, so about a half minute. This is the moth pair I'm thinking is a second visit by the same moth. Only 7 minutes between visits, you can also spot a pair of gaps in it's left wing, more visible in the left hand image of each.



Here at left is the first moth visit recorded after midnight - 1236 by my camera clock. Note that the wing edges are very clean and the colors pretty bright - likely indicating a young moth. Then after the same moth visit from the preceding paragraph, at right is the last one, coming by at 3am for a visit. Even though much of the image is out-of-focus, you can see the left wing has some sizeable chunks out of it - indicating an older specimen perhaps, and certainly making identification easier had it made more visits... Unfortunately, there are no more buds indicating any flowers coming up, so the blooming season might be over...

Still these are always interesting to observe - the proboscis longer than the body allows feeding on nectar far down the throat of the flower. Had I time to stay up and monitor the camera/flower, I could have manually taken many more of the moth visits, though usually depend on the intervalometer to take frames at regular intervals. The moths don't seem too upset by the flash - last year managed 6 frames of the same moth over its 33 second visit.  Also interesting this blooming session was the complete lack of honeybees.  In times past the last few hours of the predawn hours were swarmed with bees, but not one to be spotted this time...

So after the flower blooms? After closing early in the morning after it blooms, it shrivels and dries out. At left is an image a day later, then again 3 days after the blooming. Note on the bottom image there is a little crack on the stem near the base. By just touching it, I managed to break off the flower, leaving the stem behind. Most of the flowers do that after blooming, the stump remaining turns into a fruit. After the flower broke off at right, the stigma hangs out by its long stem. Slicing the flower lengthwise shows the remaining flower parts, including the anthers, filament threads and flower petals...

As I said, you've got to make your own fun during the monsoon nights while you can't be observing. Fortunately these sorts of things are available to distract me from the cloudy skies!

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!