Month: March 2023

More Flowers and a Target Species

Post author By Doug Backlund
Post date March 28, 2023
2 Comments on More Flowers and a Target Species

I finished up the astro season for March with only two more good nights. I sure hope April works better for that. Desert flowers continue to be great. Today, I found a species that I’ve been looking for since I first read about it in my Sonoran Desert Wildflowers book. It has been a target species for several years and I finally found it. Now I need to select a new target.

My target flower, *Nemacladus glanduliferous* (according to my book, other sources may have different taxonomy). Also known as Redtip Threadstem. What interested me was the diminutive flower, only about 1/8 inch across, a perfect target for my super macro MP-65 lens. As the flowers develop, they rotate 180 degrees, there is no known explanation or purpose for this. This image is taken with the MP-65 lens and a ring flash.

Three greenish-yellow glands are on the ovary. The stamens are fused. Why the plant seems to be clasping the stamens and stigma with the two lower petals like this I do not know.

Another nice find this morning was Desertsnow, *Lenanthus demissus*. I’ve only seen this flowering one other time, in the Ajo Mountains. Both times I’ve seen it, I’ve only seen one plant.

A closer view of a flower of Desertsnow.

NGC 4490, also known as the Cocoon Galaxy, is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici. It is about 25 million light years from Earth. It interacts with its smaller companion NGC 4485 and as a result is a starburst galaxy. NGC 4490 and NGC 4485 are collectively known in the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies as Arp 269. This is another of those very small galaxies that the C8 allows me to image.

M66, one of the Leo Triplets. I’ve done this before and just added more exposure. It is a very colorful galaxy. Five supernova have been recorded in this galaxy.

Flowers and Plants

A Trip to the Sikort Chuapo Mountains

Post author By Doug Backlund
Post date March 23, 2023
3 Comments on A Trip to the Sikort Chuapo Mountains

Today I joined up with a group of botanists for a visit to the Sikort Chuapo Mountains. This area is east of Ajo, past the Burro Gap. There are few roads and much of the area is raw wilderness. We drove in on one of the few roads that access that area. Paul and Linda had camped there a few days ago, finding the area loaded with wildflowers. I took a lot of photos, some of the scenery and some of various flowers that I still haven’t identified. Those will have to be posted later, but for now, here is some scenery.

Spires of volcanic rock. Elevations on the tops of the mountains in this area are around 3000 ft.

A typical scene, lots of Mexican Poppies, Owl Clover and lupines with Desert Chicory (the white flowers).

More Lupines and Owl Clover and a forest of Chain Cholla in the background. The cholla forest was very impressive, some of the plants are 8 feet high.

This large rock has no name on the map, but the locals call it Noah’s Ark. From Ajo, it does look somewhat like an ark but not from this angle.

Looking west from a ridge. Look at all those patches of poppies out there! One could walk for miles. Right click on the image and one can see patches of blue too, lupines.

One of the flowers I’ve identified, I’ve seen this one many times. Twining Snapdragon. *Maurandella antirrhiniflora*.

Astrophotography

Galaxies

Post author By Doug Backlund
Post date March 19, 2023

I finally got in a few nights of astrophotography. It is not looking good for more, so I thought I would go ahead and post these. I really like doing galaxies, they are so mysterious and distant, but enormous beyond our imagination. I am sure that somewhere in every galaxy there is intelligent life, but the distances are so great we will never know.

NGC 2903. This field galaxy is located about 30 million light-years away from the Milky Way and is a member of the Virgo Supercluster. A dwarf galaxy is visible below NGC 2903 and the two galaxies are interacting. From Wikipedia: It was discovered by German-born astronomer William Herschel, who cataloged it on November 16, 1784. He mistook it as a double nebula, as did subsequent observers, and it wasn’t until the nineteenth century that the Third Earl of Rosse resolved into a spiral form.

M61, another of Charles Messiers “not a comet” objects. From Wikipedia: M61 was first discovered by Barnaba Oriani on May 5, 1779, six days before Charles Messier discovered the same galaxy. Messier had observed it on the same night as Oriani but had mistaken it for a comet. Its distance has been estimated to be 45.61 million light years from the Milky Way Galaxy.

This is the Helix Galaxy, NGC 2685. It is about 50,000 light-years across and about 42 million light-years away from Earth. From our perspective, it is very small, faint and difficult to image. But I thought I would try it just to see what it looked like since it is a polar-ring galaxy. It is an object of great scientific interest, because polar-ring galaxies are very rare galaxies. They are thought to form when two galaxies gravitationally interact with each other. In my image, the polar ring is apparent.

Flowers and Plants Herps

The Big Show Continues

The spring bloom is living up to its name. I’m seeing flowers that I haven’t seen for years due to the drought. This spring, the soil is moist and the vegetation lush. Astrophotography isn’t going as well; cloudy nights have really limited that activity. It looks like I might get one or two good nights before the clouds roll back in.

Here’s one of the flowers I haven’t seen for a couple of years. The Ajo Lilies are starting to bloom and there will be a lot of them. Unlike a lot of the desert flowers, many of which are very small, the Ajo Lily is a big and showy flower.

This is Alkali Phacelia, *Phacelia neglecta*.

Devil’s Spineflower, *Chorizanthe rigida*. Most of the year all one sees of this plant is the dried-up stalk. There are tiny yellow flowers hidden in the spines. The white flowers that show on the edges are Mohave Desert Stars, which are extremely abundant right now.

Wooly Daisy, *Eriophyllum linosum*. There are other species of Eriophyllum too, I think this is the correct species but don’t have a comprehensive key to the plants of Arizona so I may have to revise.

Pygmy Golden Poppy, *Eschscholzia minutiflora*. Not as showy as the popular Mexican Poppy, this species is not all that common either.

Here’s a strange plant, a shrub in the Nightshade (Solanaceae) Family. On a recent trip to Quitoboquito Spring, some fellow naturalists and I saw two of these plants in the Senita Basin. Paul Johnson is standing by one of the plants, it is about six feet tall. Known as Sonoran Nightshade, *Solanum hindsianum*, it is common in Mexico but very rare in the southern Sonoran Desert in Arizona.

A closeup of one of the flowers of Sonoran Nightshade.

At Quitoboquito Spring, we saw this Variable Sandsnake, only the second one I’ve ever seen.

Sonoran Mud Turtles at Quitoboquito Spring.

Perry’s Beardtongue, *Penstemon parryi*.

Flowers and Plants

Spring Flower Show

It is starting, the spring bloom. The diversity is still low, but more and more plants are starting to flower. I expect this will be one of the best spring flower seasons I’ve ever experienced in the Sonoran Desert. I thought I would post a few photos from today.

Desert Evening Primrose,*Oenothera primiveris*

White Easter Bonnet, *Eriophyllum lanosum*

Desertgold, aka Desert Sunflower, *Geraea canescen*s

Astrophotography Birding Photography

More Rain and a Little Snow

Post author By Doug Backlund
Post date March 4, 2023
1 Comment on More Rain and a Little Snow

It has been a long stretch of cool to cold, wet and windy weather. Just a couple of days ago, the area got an inch of rain and some snow on the mountains. However, I think we have finally turned the corner on winter and spring is going to take over. This has certainly been the coldest winter I’ve spent in the Sonoran Desert. I entered eleven photos in the Cabeza Prieta Natural History Association Sonoran Desert Photo Show. I found a good place to get photos printed right here in Ajo so I picked out some of my favorite Sonoran Desert photos. All the entries will be on display for the month of March.