Heading South

I left my campsite yesterday and drove to Sidney, Nebraska. I’m in the Cabela’s RV Park. Today I’m aiming to make to it to Timpas and spending the night there. I would have been happy to stay where I was, but the weather is changing, a period of rain and cloudy weather is moving in.

Here is another image of STEVE from the geomagnetic storm that occurred Monday night. Spaceweather.com had several other reports and photos of STEVE. Mine was the only one from South Dakota. I was pretty excited to see this! I guess I won’t be seeing any more auroras now that I’m going south. Read more about STEVE at this LINK.

A few days ago, I was sorting things out in the truck when I noticed lots of small things hitting the truck. A closer look revealed that backswimmers, aquatic insects, were coming out of the sky onto the truck. I checked around the area and they were not coming down on the camper or anywhere else. I realized what was happening, the shiny, black truck looked like water to the backswimmers. There must have been a large hatch of them somewhere and they were looking for new areas to colonize. This is a photo of one I took some years back at the same place, genus Notonecta.

It took a few days, but I finally found a few Pygmy Nuthatches near camp.

A pair of Canada Jays (Gray Jays) in the top of a pine.

I probably shouldn’t even show this, it is not very good. This is Abell 85, an extremely faint supernova remnant near Cassiopeia. I spent three nights on this, gathering 6 hours of exposure. I could not even see it in any of my photos, and even after processing it was very faint. Without the new software that allows me to remove stars before processing, it would have been hopeless. Unless I decide to invest in a new astrophotography camera, I think these very faint objects will be off limits to me, it just isn’t worth the time.

4 replies on “Heading South”

Hey Doug, just getting caught up on your summer. Absolutely fabulous photography as usual. I tried to comment on some but it looks like the comments feature gets closed fairly soon after the posting date, or maybe I was missing something….anyway, too many fine photos to mention them all. The astrophotography is jaw-dropping, I especially liked the Tulip Galaxy. We’re aiming for mid-Nov. eta to Ajo, hope to see you then.

Nebula. Tulip Nebula : )

Hi Paul, I tried to email you but my messages bounced. Hope you got to see the aurora too. I close comments after two weeks to avoid excess spamming. See you in Ajo! I’ll be there sometime in October.

Doug

looking forward to seeing you. I take off south on the 27th. Your photos are awesome as usual ❤️

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