For the past week I have been putting a lot of time into dark nebulas. There are hundreds of them listed in Stellarium but almost no photos anywhere online to see what they look like. I tried for a few of the better- known dark nebulas, these are the ones with some bright stars lighting up the clouds. They are difficult targets; the dust is dim and it is hard to get enough exposure. With the C8 (at f6.3) it is nearly impossible but with the 500 mm lens at f4 I can get one nebula done in a couple of nights if all goes well. Framing is hard too, I can’t see the clouds in the images, all I can see is areas with no stars, obscured by the dust. Anyway, I will post some of the results below. As always, right click on an image and open in a new tab for a larger view.
The Helping Hand Nebula is a very faint dust cloud in Cassiopeia. It is made up of two main dark nebulas, LDN 1357 and LDN 1358. There are lots of other faint things in here too, some small reflection nebulas and other small dark nebulas. I was just happy to see that I was able to get the hand! This is in the Taurus Molecular Cloud. The main features are Barnard 7 (the dark nebula) and LBN 782, the blue reflection nebula. I added more exposure to NGC 1333, the Embryo Nebula. I think it looks pretty good and will leave it as is. Dark nebulas and reflection nebulas abound in this image of VdB 14 and VdB 15. This one was more difficult than I expect and I probably need a lot more exposure. VdB is a catalog of reflection nebula published by Sidney van den Bergh in 1966.A Gray Flycatcher at the golf course. It has been a long time since I’ve seen one here in the Ajo area. A Sharp-shinned Hawk at the golf course.
I stopped by the plaza a couple of days ago and was watching some robins on the grass when I realized one of them was a Rufous-backed Robin. Since then, I’ve been able to get some pretty good photos. Greg Gilson found a Williamson’s Sapsucker at the golf course but by the time I got there, we could not locate it again. If I could get it, that would be all of the North American sapsuckers for me in one location, the Ajo golf course. I looked this morning for a couple of hours and still couldn’t find it, so I suppose it has left.
Rufous-backed Robin on the sidewalk, getting a drink. Rufous-backed Robin with American Robin. A Green-tailed Towhee in an arroyo near my campsite. The saying is that “any gull is a good gull in Pima County”. Here are 41 Ring-billed Gulls at the ponds. I have been seeing lots of Ring-billed Gulls but other than the Heermann’s Gull that was here earlier, no other species. Eighty American Avocets, may be a high count for the Ajo ponds. As always, right click on the image and open in a new tap for a larger image.
Last night the forecast for “seeing” ranged from excellent to good. Excellent seeing is very rare so I decided to try some planetary photography. Jupiter is about the only planet in a good place right now, Saturn is getting lower in the west and Venus isn’t a very photogenic planet. So, Jupiter it was. I am very pleased with how it turned out.
I think these are the best photos of Jupiter I’ve ever taken. These are stacks of video frames, taken over about three minutes. In this image, I got two of Jupiter’s moons. Europa is in the upper left and Io at lower right. Io and Europa are two of the Galilean moons. The other two, Ganymede and Callisto, are out of the field of view. Io and Europa are approximately the size of our moon. Apparent size from Earth is about 1 arc second, so it is like taking a photo of a dime 2.5 miles away. Another photo of a Kit Fox at the den. One couldn’t ask for nicer light!
A few days ago I went out to Hot Shot Well to check it out. I had heard about Barn Owls potentially using the site quite a few years ago. I think it was about four years ago when I first visited the old well, which is actually a really big hole that someone dug many years ago. It is maybe 25 ft. across and more than 50 ft. deep. On my first visit, there was evidence of owls using it but there were no owls. The following year I returned and found that a colony of bees had moved in and I got chased off by them. There were aggressive. Every year since, I have carefully checked it and the bees have been there but no owls. On my visit this year, it appeared that the bees were gone and lo and behold, there were two Barn Owls at the bottom. I contacted Joe and Mary Staab, in Mesquite, Nevada as I knew Joe really wanted a Barn Owl. They came down here on Tuesday and we all hiked out there, the owls were still there. Unfortunately, this time we saw bees too but they didn’t bother us.
Shooting almost straight down at the Barn Owls. I think they may have some young ones stashed away out of sight. I’m working on the Embryo Nebula again but this time with the 500 f4 lens. I get a much wider field of view, which I like, and I gather light almost twice as fast as I can with the C8. I like the result so far. I put a lot of time into this nebula, also known as NGC 1333, with the C8 last year and never got very satisfying results.
As I posted previously, there are enormous numbers of butterflies around the area, mostly where there is Chuckwalla Delight in flower. I have been searching for a new species for me, but mostly the same ones, especially Sonoran Metalmarks. There are literally thousands of them. I have been doing some astrophotography too. It has warmed up here quite bit, record high temps again, but that is only about 90 degrees so it is tolerable.
I’ll start out with a Ceraunus Blue. I don’t think I saw any of these last year when it was so dry. Fatal Metalmark, another species I have not seen for a long time. Yet another Great Purple Hairstreak, this one with a curled proboscis, on Chuckwalla Delight. A Leda Ministreak that landed dangerously close to an assassin bug. The assassin bug made an attempt to grab it, but the butterfly got away. Lucky for the butterfly but not so lucky for the bug or the photographer. A typical sight wherever there is Chuckwalla Delight in flower. This is the Little Sombrero Galaxy, NGC 7814, in Pegasus. It is very similar to the Sombrero Galaxy but is much further away and therefore appears smaller. The small galaxy in the middle right is IC 5381, a spiral galaxy that is about 508 million light years distant from the Milky Way and has a diameter of about 195,000 light years. There are other smaller, faint galaxies that are also visible, some of which may be a billion lights years away. The largest star in the upper left is HIP199, a 7.2 magnitude star that would be barely visible with binoculars.M74, the Phantom Galaxy, located in the constellation Pisces. I have done this one before but the results are better now with guiding. It is named the Phantom Galaxy because it is very faint and hard to see in a telescope. About 32 million light years distant.
I figure it is about time to post something. I’ve been keeping busy with astrophotography, birding, and hiking. Yesterday I found a Rufous-backed Robin at the city park and even got some good photos. That is the third time I have seen Rufous-backed Robin in the Ajo area. Today, I found a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker in the same park but could not get any good photos. I will keep trying.
Rufous-backed Robin in Bud Walker Park, Ajo. I drive by a Kit Fox den everyday, every now and then I will spot one outside in the sun. This one was catching the late afternoon sun just before sundown. I’ve got 10 hours on the Helix Nebula now and I think it is enough. I’ve never tried the Pacman Nebula with the C8 and with guiding. It is almost too big for the C8 but it works, I guess. This nebula is about 9000 light years distant and 48 light years in diameter. There is a dark cloud in the center of the nebula known as a Bok Globule, a dense cloud of dust and gas, a prelude to star formation. Officially NGC 281, the Pacman Nebula is found in the constellation of Cassiopeia.My Halloween image, the Skull Nebula. I have added a lot more exposure since posting this a few weeks ago.
Quite a few new birds are showing up yesterday and today. Another Red-breasted Sapsucker has appeared at the golf course and this one is, so far, easy to find and get close too. This morning it was in the shadows though, so I went back to the truck and got my flash. The flash didn’t bother it all. I also saw a Townsend’s Solitaire, Lawrence’s Goldfinch, Swainson’s Thrush, and a Lazuli Bunting. Finally, the moon is starting to fade and the weather looks good after Monday, I should have at least five good days of astrophotography and I am looking forward to that.
Get ready for a barrage of Red-breasted Sapsucker photos! Finally, a pure specimen (there are lots of hybrids) and one that lets me get close. Shot with flash. Close up. From last evening, when I first saw the bird it was on the palm fruit. It was just at sundown, I had to shoot at higher ISO. It has been a long time since I’ve seen any Great Purple Hairstreaks. So far this fall, I’ve seen several. A Common Ground Dove at the golf course. Townsend’s Solitaire bathing with a Lazuli Bunting. A pair of Greater Yellowlegs at Highway Tank. A Desert Blond Tarantula that I came across a few days ago.
Today I drove out to a place I call 8115 Arroyo. It seems to have no name on maps but there is BLM Road 8115 that goes to it, so I have made a name for it. I’ve been watching the summer monsoon storms on radar for the last three or four months and this area has got quite a lot of rain. It shows too, the vegetation in the arroyo is lush and green, the spiny hackberry are loaded with green fruit that is just starting to ripen and should be attracting birds soon. The numbers of butterflies was amazing. It was mostly American Snouts and Cloudless Sulphurs, but I also saw Queens, Sonoran Metalmarks, Empress Leilia, Southern Dogface, Mexican Yellows, Gray Hairstreak, Leda Ministreak, and Pipevine Swallowtail. I saw my first ever caterpillar of a Pipevine Swallowtail too. The abundance of American Snouts was just amazing, sometimes hundreds on a single plant.
I don’t think I have seen this before, at least not in flower. Texas Virgin’s Bower, Clematis drummondii. There was lot of it flowering in 8115 Arroyo. Butterflies seemed to ignore it though. Here’s the Pipevine Swallowtail caterpillar. I had to post it on BugGuide to find out what it was. It is a large caterpillar, it was on Chuckwalla Delight. Throughout the arroyo, Chuckwalla Delight was attracting lots of butterflies. I can walk by hundreds of butterflies of many species but when I find a Sonoran Metalmark I have to start taking photos. The flower is Chuckwalla’s Delight.It isn’t often I can get shots of the underside of a Sonoran Metalmark, the light wasn’t very good here. I took more photos of the Lewis’s Woodpeckers at the golf course, now there are four of them. A Cloudless Sulphur nectaring on Hummingbird Trumpet.
Birding has really improved with the latest storm. Today I saw two American White Pelicans at the ponds (first time ever for Ajo) and two Lewis’s Woodpeckers at the golf course, only the second time I’ve seen that species in the Ajo area. There were three Red-necked Phalaropes at the pond too. I had one good night for astro before the storm and now the moon is getting too bright again. I am enjoying this cooler weather but will miss snake hunting, I suppose till next spring, although I did have an encounter with a snake recently.
I was checking out The Thicket for owls. I didn’t see any owls but I did come across this Coachwhip. It was close, laying there and watching me and I suppose hoping I would just go away. I have given up trying to catch this species for photography. Even if I could catch it, all they do is fight, bite, and try to get away. Not a nice snake to handle. And they are big, this one was about 5 feet long. Zoomed out to see more of the Coachwhip, a very fast and powerful predator.One of the two Lewis’s Woodpecker at the golf course. A species of wild Datura, or Moonflower. These wild Morning Glories are blooming by the hundreds in The Thicket. I got about an hour on this, the Skull Nebula, NGC 246, about 1600 light years away. I have tried this before with the 500f4 but it is too small, it works much better with the C8. I am going to be adding more exposure time to this eventually. This is an interesting planetary nebula, located in Cetus. It has a central star, known as a white dwarf, that is forming the nebula, but also a second star and an even smaller third star, forming the only known planetary nebula with three central stars. None of the stars in this image are bright enough to be seen even with binoculars, the brightest is about magnitude 10. Here is the white dwarf, cropped out of the image above. The large second star is also visible. I am pretty impressed with my Celestron C8 reflector since it can actually resolve these two stars. Not many scopes can. The third star is too small or maybe is hidden behind these stars, I don’t know. Here’s a link with more information: Eerie Skull Nebula glows bright for Halloween | Space My little C8 can resolve the central stars just about as well as the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope! I need more exposure time for the dimmer stuff.
I think the heat of summer is behind me now. By next week it looks like an even more significant cool down is on the way. I’ve been getting a little bit of astro done too. I decided that I’m going to spend more time on fewer deep sky objects. I started out with the Helix Nebula. As always, one can right click on an image, open in a new tab and see a larger image.
The Helix Nebula in the constellation Aquarius. This is one of the largest and brightest planetary nebulas in the night sky but even at this latitude (32 degrees north) it only rises to about 35 degrees above the horizon, so I am shooting through lots of atmosphere. I’ve got almost 7 hours on it now (with the C8) and the faint outer bands of glowing hydrogen are starting to show up. I’ve become somewhat of a Lord of the Rings fan and I think it looks like the eye of Sauron. My snake hunting is going OK, I’m finding lots of snakes but mostly of three species, including this one, the Long-nosed Snake. I have photographed these before but here’s a new one. A Western Spotted Orb Weaver. A young female Red-naped Sapsucker that let me get very close.
