Categories
Astrophotography Birding Mammals

Sonoran Desert Winter

The cold has finally arrived, such as it is. Night time temperatures have been dropping to near freezing and will drop below freezing for the next few nights. Time to get out my winter sleeping bag! It still warms up nicely for the day. Some rain would be very welcome. Yesterday, a biologist from the Arizona Game and Fish came out and we found another dead Sonoran Toad at Highway Tank. He took some samples so maybe there will be answers soon as to what is killing the toads.

My annual Kit Fox photo. There are two of them that come around every night now.
I found three Long-eared Owls in an arroyo off the Child’s Mountain Road. Not a great photo but I was happy to get it for eBird.
Anna’s Hummingbird nectaring on some of the few Ocotillo flowers that are available.
A House Wren, first one I’ve seen this winter. Not a common wintering bird here but there are usually more than I’ve been seeing.
The Spider and the Fly nebulas. Readers may remember I posted an image of the Fly Nebula a while back. This is what it looks like at 500mm focal length along with its companion the Spider Nebula. It looks like it could use another 10 hours. The Spider (IC 417) and The Fly (NGC1931) are located in the constellation Auriga, and lie about 10,000 and 7000 light-years away from planet Earth.
Last night I tried to image Jupiter again. The seeing forecast was only average but it turned out quite well, I think. I wish I could get a night when the Great Red Spot was on this side.
Jones-Emberson 1, also known as the Headphone Nebula. I did this a few years ago with the C8. It took many hours to get anything, this time I used the 500f4 and the IDAS Nebula Booster filter. This is the result after only 3 hours of exposure. It is a very faint and small planetary nebula in the constellation Lynx.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *