The Season of Green!

Have been back at "Ketelsen East" for a couple weeks and have immensely been enjoying the Summer season here! The trip up was "uneventful", but then, how often do you have eventful flights?! The only time I can remember a flight I'd call eventful was when Melinda surprisingly upgraded us to first class - now THAT was memorable! So it was a dull trip, but at least I booked a window seat to watch the country roll by. And fortunately for me this time, the window was actually possible to look through! Often they are behind your shoulder and takes a contortionist to look thru, let alone try to take a photo.


It seems lately that the flights have initially been much further south than years past. A few years back, we almost always flew past the LBT Observatory on Mount Graham 80 miles NE of Tucson. This time I was able to look down on Willcox, a good 25 miles south of Graham, making targeting the LBT all but impossible. Similarly, instead of passing right over the Clifton/Morenci copper mine with a great view, it was again a good 15 miles to the north as shown here at left.  Even cropping the full zoom shot at right did little to get detail like the earlier version (see link).

It is always a challenge to locate the path taken along the way. Usually you can look for landmarks or unusual formations, even road or river intersections. Look for something that would stand out while perusing Google maps, while noting the time stamp on the photos so you can figure out where to start your search. We crossed the Rio Grande in north-central New Mexico - that was easy enough to spot the green ribbon of fields that must use wells pulled from the river. But which city was that? The railroad yards at center help locate it to Belen, New Mexico. The Rio Grande is the meandering little stream in the sandy channel in the lower right part of the frame.

Once past the Rio Grande and east of Albuquerque, I'm pretty much lost using landmarks. I figured we crossed up through New Mexico and eventually into Kansas. As a farmer boy, I could see the irrigated fields, yet, also saw square fields of golden yellow. My friend who grew up in Kansas confirmed that the golden fields this time of year was likely winter wheat, probably in the process of being harvested or about to be.

The chance to reorient myself presented itself when we crossed what I thought was the Missouri River. It seemed small, but was long and windy, so figured that was it. I shot the unusual twisty stream emptying into it shown at left and figured it would be easy to locate on the Google Maps, and I was right - took about a minute of searching to find the exact spot where the Nodaway River empties into the Missouri, about 15 miles northwest of St Joseph on the Kansas/Missouri border...

It got hazy and cloudy which made looking more difficult, so missed the Mississippi crossing. A few turns of the aircraft made locating more difficult too. I never spotted the Illinois River sometimes seen, and we were getting close to landing and me without knowing where we were! Finally another turn and I spotted one of the more striking landmarks - the twin towers of the nuke plant near Byron, Illinois. Evidently a storm had just passed and with the humidity, the cooling towers were belching a steam trail that could likely have been seen for a hundred miles! The towers themselves are 500 feet high and when trailing a steam cloud are quite apparent. I visited the place once, but never blogged about it - an eerie place at night!

The nuke plant told me we were going to head in straight east to O'Hare, likely over "Ketelsen East". The storm that passed through before we did evidently left a lot of rain - some of the fields of corn had impromptu lakes standing in them!

Continuing eastwards, sure enough, the urban areas started, and I was able to pick out Randall Road that traverses north-south on the west side of most of the towns our here west of Chicago. Even before seeing the Fox River, I knew we were near the normal path, likely passing about a mile north of "Ketelsen East" on the way in. At right, spotted in the Fox River to the town a few miles north of me was the Grand Victoria Casino - permanently tied to the dock from back in the day when casinos had to be on "boats", even though the Fox isn't navigable by something this large... So thus ended the flight - dull and boring, right? Well, not when you are paying attention!

So by the time I got by baggage, got
picked up, went to dinner w/the friend who drove me home and got out to the house, it was dark, and it wasn't till the next morning that it hit me - it was GREEN outside! You have to realize that when I'd come up, Tucson hadn't had measureable rain in 4 months, and it was dry, mostly sporting shades of brown and grey. I felt like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz stepping into the Technicolor world of Munchkin Land after a B&W existence! The daytime view out the bathroom window at left gave the first hint that "we weren't in AZ any more"! This is an HDR image, where 3 different exposures were combined to sample the extreme levels of illumination. This still life has appeared before in the blog, with the results of a blizzard outside the window from 2.5 years ago! Looked a little different then!

Stepping outside later in the day confirmed it... While I had been here a mere 6 weeks earlier, the trees had not fully leafed out before my departure, so the appearance was totally different. The shade under the 80 foot tall oaks and hickories was nearly impenetrable! And GREEN - did I mention the GREEN! It was dazzling to the eye it was so green. The shot at right above is looking out from my little stoop towards the north, taken with a fisheye lens stretched a little to look a little more normal.

The photo at left shows a shot towards where I just took the above image. The cottage is surrounded in several sides with plants, ferns shown here on the NE corner.

Taking an amble towards the river and looking back towards the house, you can see some of the trees still towering over the house - and of course, the American flag Melinda liked to hang while we were in residence, shown at right...

And of course, it isn't all green! There always seems to be something in bloom, and even as I arrived, the day lilies were nearing the end of their season. Here is a focus stack of 6 frames to extend the range of sharp focus.

Lots more to blog, lets see if I can start a trend and get more than one every month or so!

2018 Canyon Wrapup

Again, better late than never, here are a few photos and stories from this year's Grand Canyon Star Party! It ended a week yesterday, but as normal lately, the photos have to settle into my brain before figuring what I'll do with them - text normally follows the photos I've selected! With a recently-obtained fisheye (Sigma 15mm F/2.8), I think these are the most striking photos! Particularly the one at left that shows the Milky Way rising over the crowd of star party telescopes and observers...

The shot at right is a bit more personal as I'm shown sitting beside my Celestron 14".  The string of red lights is one of the park rangers stopping by to say hi, and there is also someone looking thru the telescope. The bright "star" at upper right is planet Jupiter, and Saturn, a little fainter, has just risen above the trees, just to the right of the observer's head... The same part of the Milky Way - the brightest part near the Sagittarius/Scorpio border, is always spectacular as a backdrop. These are both 30 second exposures, wide open and an ISO of 4,000.


In the right shot above of my C-14, you can see above the observer's head my 500mm lens mounted there for some snapshots taken after the crowd thins out... I did this last year and was a lot of fun, so decided to do it again! With the C-14 properly polar aligned, it should easily track for a couple minute sub-exposure, so took a few frames to stack to decrease noise and increase signal and color saturation. At left is an eternal favorite this time of year - Messier 20 above (the Triffid Nebula), and Messier 8 below (the Lagoon Nebula). On more than a few occasions, I pulled up a frame of this image and used the colors to explain the physics that caused them. Of course visually no colors are visible - just shades of grey. It was a powerful demonstration - people could see the blue (reflection from a nearby blue star) and red (hydrogen fluorescing from UV light from nearby hot stars) nebulae, but no color. It demonstrated how our eye has evolved so that our B&W sensors (rods) allow us to see in dim conditions, but the color sensor (rods) only work during daylight brightness levels.

Also visible nearby in Sagittarius was the comet 2016 M1 PanSTARRS. I knew approximately where it was and in my 3rd shot there it was! Comets are easy to spot when near the sun - they show up green from the dissociation of carbon molecules by sunlight. On this night (11 June), it was 120 million miles from us on the Earth, and 214 Million miles from the Sun! While it gets a little closer to the sun at perihelion in October, it will not be visible from the northern hemisphere... This is a stack of 4 exposures of 60 seconds each. Oh - that fuzzy star at upper right? That is Messier 70 - a globular cluster about 29,000 light years towards the center of our galaxy...


Anyone who knows me also knows I'm a fan of dark nebulae! How do you see a black cloud, I hear you ask? Well, you see it in silhouette against clouds of stars, so looks like dark clouds against the Milky Way, as in the fisheye shots above. A spot in southern Ophiuchus is rich in dark clouds. Shown here at left thru the 500mm is part of what is called the "pipe" nebula because of its resemblance to a smoking pipe with more dark nebulae curling upwards...


And at right is a little dark cloud visible at the top in the link's wide field - the Snake Nebula, or B72... The "S" shape of the snake is strikingly apparent in photographs, but try as I might, have never seen it visually!


There IS one dark nebula you can see - Barnard 86, the Inkspot Nebula! It is shown at left in the full frame of the 500mm. Seen against one of the brighter clouds of the Milky Way center, the small dark cloud is easy to see in silhouette between a small star cluster and bright-ish star... Several friends and I show the dark cloud at the Canyon for something "totally different"!

Also for something different, Omega Centauri is a spectacular globular cluster that just clears the southern horizon.  Not many people have it on their observing list at the Grand Canyon, but I happened to notice that it was hanging just over the visitor center from my telescopes location on the field. I happened to have my 200mm mounted on the scope that day so took a 30 second snapshot of it - shown at right. It is a HUGE cluster, upwards of 4 million stars about 16,000 light years away.  But it is usually a dim glow seen so lowly in the sky. A photograph can make it look more apparent - here over the VC roof!


We had a great 6 nights of the star party, but some clouds and sprinkles (!) at the end. There were spectacular crowds at night, good crowds of astronomers too - likely about our best year given the weather at the end. We had elk too! Remember I've been going to these things for 28 years, and in the beginning saw absolutely NO elk. Now they are hardly getting excited about. They are evidently smart enough they know how to turn on the water fountains to get a drink - the photo at left taken near the bathroom at our old site at Yavapai Point... And as the star party wound down, a young female stops by the telescope field to say hello to Erich Karkoschka! We are supposed to stay over 100 feet from them, but we're not sure the protocol when they walk up to YOU!



Finally the last Sunday dawned clear - very clear, and after a few days of clouds, a trip was needed to go see the Canyon. We all took many photos of the Canyon, but one of the most striking of mine was from Mojave Point where an agave flower in its brilliant yellows was seen against the reds and browns of the Canyon. At left is an HDR shot of the plant mostly in deep shade, and at right is a close-up of the flower with what I think is a female black carpenter bee pollinating the beautiful flowers...

Next year's star party, the 29th, faces some uncertainty as the current organizer Jim O'Connor has broadcast his intentions to retire from those efforts. But the event is so successful that I think it would continue regardless. The astronomers love it, the public and park loves it, so I'm sure it will continue far into the future in something like the present form...

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!

More Images of Spring

I think of myself as an observer of nature, but have to admit that my neighbor Elaine first noticed the bird's nest over my porch light, asking if it was inhabited. Well, I had no idea, but a quick reach upwards with the cell phone and its built-in flash confirmed 3 robin eggs! Once revealed, then yes, I noticed the pair taking turns on it, always flying off as I went into or left the only door in use. Only one rainy night when arriving home did it stay in place while I walked directly under it. I avoided looking up and making eye contact, but it definitely stayed put! The photo at left was taken by leaving the camera and telephoto on a tripod, set to a 5 minute delay, then taking a photo every couple minutes so I had a few to choose from. At right, I used a fisheye lens and a flash to light up the nest to get a "bird's eye" view. I also note that the light in the porch light is a compact fluorescent, so even though it is on 24/7, it doesn't heat up the nest and hard-cook the eggs!

So when I left on my week-long road trip to the Carolinas, there were 3 eggs. Once back, I was excited to check the new "housemates" and found a 4th egg had been laid. No action for a few days, but finally, on Saturday the 19th, spotted what looked like a blob of mud - hatching time! Took a full day for the 4th one to hatch.

I didn't really see much action going on - the robin pair were a little more protective, staying VERY close as I came or went, but never really attacked me directly to try driving me off. I did not see any feeding activity the 2 days before I left, but I did document a couple of the nestings with the macro lens before I left Tuesday. Not particularly cute, but full of interesting details! Interesting that the eyes aren't open yet, but eye slits have appeared. Neck seems all tendons and transparent skin...

Wikipedia claims they'll fly in 2 weeks, so don't expect to find any traces of them in a month or 6 weeks when I'm hoping to return... It would have been fun to photograph the "captives" before they fly away, but thems the breaks!

The Reports of my Death...

To quote a famous American author, "The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated"! And yes, it is evidently true - about a month ago I was reported, by the paper no less, that I had died! Well, at least that someone named Dean A Ketelsen had died, and that part was true...

One of my standard tasks on my way to Iowa is to stop in Fulton along the Mississippi River and visit my Aunt Velma, now in the nursing home. She is among the few survivors of my Dad's generation, and as I get older myself, I like to hang on to those times as long as possible! I've blogged about her before - just 18 months ago here, and back when we held a reunion on her farm here. Evidently she was the first to discover in the Clinton Herald that I, or rather, Mr. Ketelsen had passed. Convinced it was me, even though the birthdate was wrong and what the heck would I be doing dying in Ohio, she was evidently inconsolable, even after being told that if true, my sisters would have alerted the family... They finally had to look up the full obituary and saw the details of Mr. Ketelsen's life as well as his photo before she finally believed it wasn't me that did the passing...

Finally word got to my sisters and eventually on to me. While I'm sorry for Mr. Ketelsen, I'm sort of glad it wasn't me! I guess my passing would explain my lack of posts the last few months, but can't claim that distinction!

The Silly Goose and Other Views of Spring

From the paucity of posts, you might well think I'm out of business. I'm only lacking in inspiration to post, not in content! In fact, since my last post (was it really 3 months ago?!) I've gone from "Ketelsen East" to Tucson, and back again! Have been enjoying the emerging Spring for several weeks already and taken a road trip to visit family and friends in the Carolinas... So yes, I have content...

So on this trip east, I lucked out - arrived to the Midwest 2 DAYS after the last of the snow melted! For the last week of April I was shocked at the lack of signs of new growth other than daffodils... But it was soon to bust out! Fortunately there were other signs of a new season. Canada Geese now overwinter, and get an early start on a new crop. Interestingly, you rarely see the nests except for this one I saw on my daily trip to pick up a morning paper - in the middle of a Jewel/Osco parking lot! I was taken aback when I first spotted her, but sure enough she was stuck on her nest like glue. So much so that the store staff had spotted her and left bread crusts for her to eat. Note on the image at right there are at least 2 goslings hanging w/mom while the last eggs hatch. The next day as I drove up (without camera), mom, dad and 5 babes were waddling to edge of the lot to cross the street to a pond. So despite the iffy location, there appeared to be a successful conclusion!

Meanwhile on the grounds of "Ketelsen East", there are always groups of geese coming in off the Fox River. Shooting out the open window, I caught a group of goslings and their mom caught in a brief downpour. From first image to last, only about 6 minutes had passed. As it first started raining the babes all ran to mom, who spread her wings to protect them all from the brief downpour. As soon as it stopped, one peeked out and before you knew it, they all went about their business! The image at right is a blowup of the 3rd image showing them all piled under mom. I believe all 9 goslings are there under her!




As I said above, there wasn't much of a wait for the yard to brighten up. Among the first is the Blue Scilla - a favorite of mind, tinting the lawn blue in places! These strange downward-pointing flowers are tough to photograph - even when on the ground pointing horizontally not much of the flower can be seen! But the bright color is a welcome early harbinger of Spring! The image at left is a 7-frame focus-stack to extend the full flower into focus. At right is a wider view of the yard showing the day or two of the lawn dominated by the scilla before the red trillium starting coming in too. Interesting how they all come, bloom and go sort of one-at-a time!




Yes, trillium is always a favorite of mine - but so tough to image... I've done images of both the red and white trillium before, but decided to do an ultra-close-up of the white trillium this time. At left is the wider view showing the 3 petals of the flower, and at right is actually the same image, but shown at full-resolution showing flower parts and pollen-laden anthers. In both of these, 25 frames w/a slight focus shift between were combined to extend the depth of field of the image... It continues to amaze me how much resolution you can squeeze out of an image using focus-stacking techniques!





And surprisingly, there were NO dandelions for the first two weeks of my stay! I always thought that they were among the first of the flower/weeds to appear in the yard, but obviously the blue scilla and trillium won out this year... I enjoy stalking the dandelions, hunting the tiny little aphids that feed on nectar in the flower... Tiny, but suitably challenging to capture! This time I was loaded for bear - had 2 different systems to track them down - my regular macro plus extension tubes to get as large as possible, and also, this time borrowed an infinity-corrected microscope objective shooting in front of a 200mm lens for a comparable 2X view. Here are the two results - both of these are focus-stacks of a half-dozen frames. At left is the 100mm Canon macro lens with about 6 cm of extension tubes. At right is the 2X microscope objective in front of a 200mm lens. While the results are comparable, the edge goes to the macro/extension tubes as the depth of field is a little larger and the hardware (as mine is set up) is a bit easier to use. Further study is warranted!




And after the blue scilla and still during the dandelions, the violets came out too. They seem so innocuous, and yet, under a macro lens seem so mysterious and different compared to other flowers.  At left is a "wide" shot showing mostly just a flower petal and the subtle color veining. At right is the center of the flower where the numerous "fingers" obviously guide the pollinators for maximum effectiveness... Both of these are focus stacks - 5 frames for the petal at left, 10 for the close-up at right...








And there were some new ones for me too - neighbor Elaine was pointing out the population of flowers in her yard and identified these large-leaved forest dwellers near the fence line as "May Apples", indeed some forming small "apples" about 1.5 cm diameter on the stalks under them. And sure enough, some of them also sported striking flowers, but instead of atop the plants, they were on the stem well protected by the leaves! Kind of weird, but worth lying on the ground to get a close up of the flowers with the macro. These were taken after a rain, but they looked a little "waxy", which might have been a product of the rinsing they had...





The weather these weeks has just been fabulous! It has been cool - cold enough to support making a batch of chili one weekend! Have not yet used the AC, and in fact, many mornings have had to use the heat to get the house into the 60s! We've had long stretches of clear sky, so that watching the spinning of the spheres across the sky are an entertaining pastime! At left is the rising moon showing over the barely-budding trees 3 weeks ago! Note that even this photo is not a simple one to take! Shooting with the 300mm lens, to keep the trees in focus, as well as the moon required 3 exposures - one for the tree at left w/the buds, then a middle-range shot for the other trees, then third exposure focused on the moon - the most distant object - duh! Photoshop assembled the 3-frame focus stack easily, keeping the sharp parts of each of the 3 exposures to combine into this one!

And we've also had some rainy weather, which to this desert rat is just as welcome as a sunny day! Sleeping with the temps in the 50s or 60s with the windows open during a storm is just heavenly!  Although I have to ask - is there anything sadder than a dandelion seed pod after a heavy rain, as shown at right?

Back to "Ketelsen West" soon, where I hope to catch up on some of the content I've been collecting. Don't give up on me!