I’ve been here since early November and it has not rained more than a few sprinkles in all that time. The current forecast calls for a chance of rain later this week. If it happens it will be too late for most of the spring annuals but it will help. I’ve never seen it this dry here. The migration of birds is slowly picking up, mostly with sparrows and swallows.
I went for another hike in Alamo Canyon. This time the bird numbers were down and the seep has dried up. I still got a few nice photos, like this male Ruby-crowned Kinglet. The Canyon Wren was still there and this time I got a much better shot!A Lincoln’s Sparrow that was scratching around in the oak leaves. Butterflies are going to be few and far between this spring, so I was happy to photograph this Empress Leilia. I did see a few orangetips flying around too but none of them landed. My first snake of the spring, a Western Patch-nosed Snake on the Child’s Mountain Road. My previous attempt at the Skull and Crossbones Nebula was with the C8 and without the Nebula Booster Filter. I spent a few nights reshooting with the 500mm f4 and filter. The OII really popped out. It gives the nebula an entirely different shape and color. It has been a few years since I’ve imaged the Rosette Nebula. With the use of some of the new software, I think this is the best result I’ve ever had. This is with the 500 f4 and without the IDAS Nebula Booster Filter, it really isn’t needed for this large and bright nebula. Late winter and spring is what some call “galaxy season”. The plane of the Milky Way Galaxy is moving further south and west for now and galaxy rich areas of the night sky are more prevalent. This is NGC 2683, about 25 million light years out there in the constellation Lynx. There are several dwarf galaxies associated with NGC 2683 but the two faint galaxies that are in this image are distant background galaxies, far out in the universe. M 44, the Beehive Cluster, is an open star cluster in the constellation Cancer. It is easily visible to the unaided eye in dark skies. In 1609, Galileo studied the Beehive Cluster and was able to resolve it into 40 stars with his telescope. Bright massive stars are concentrated in the cluster’s core while dimmer and less massive stars populate its halo. The cluster’s core radius is estimated at 11.4 light years.
