Category: Astrophotography

February Update

I’m still here. It has been over two weeks since my last post. There hasn’t been much going on, until the last few days. Now there more signs of spring with some new birds migrating into the area. I am finally getting a few clear nights for astrophotography. By next week we will be seeing temperatures near 90 F. Still no rain and it does not look promising for the foreseeable future.

A Neotropic Cormorant appeared at Lake Ajo one day, this is the first one I’ve seen here, although they are common at Gillespie Dam and other places that have water with fish. This bird did not stay long, as soon as it realized there were no fish in Lake Ajo it took off.

A female Mountain Bluebird that has been in the campground all winter. A few days ago, I got this shot of it in the soft late afternoon light.

I made my first trip this winter to Alamo Canyon. There was actually a very small seep in the South Fork, in a bosque that usually is good birding. And it was good birding! Here is a Rufous-crowned Sparrow I photographed there. I also got my FOS Hooded Oriole, Cassin’s Vireo and a Gray Vireo. Here is a LINK to my eBird checklist.

It as been several years since I’ve seen a Bell’s Sparrow. One has to search all of the much more common Sagebrush Sparrows for a bird with no stripes on the back and black malars. I found one (maybe 2) at Highway Tank. The back is not striped, there are black streaks on the scapulars, but that is normal.

Here a frontal view showing a strong black breast spot and black malars.

Hubble’s Variable Nebula, NGC 2261, in the constellation Monoceros. I have photographed this before but only as part of a wider view of the Cone Nebula. I’ve never tried it with the C8. It is a small target but very bright. This is one of the few space objects that exhibit rather rapid changes in shape and brightness. One can track changes over time with a sketch or photos each time. It’s not the nebula changing shape, but rather clouds of thick dust and gas near the illuminating star (R Monocerotis) that are casting shadows into the nebula. Discovered by William Herschel in 1783, Edwin Hubble was the first to describe this pulsating nebula.

This is NGC 2467, with the common moniker of Skull and Crossbones Nebula. I have never tried this one before. It does not rise above 30 degrees in the south, so it stays in the murk of the atmosphere all the time. However, it is quite bright and large, so it worked out OK. Located in the constellation Puppis, it is a large star forming region, rich in ionizing hydrogen and even OII. I need a lot more exposure to bring out all the details and it may not even be possible at that low elevation.

Astrophotography Birding

Springlike in the Desert

The Sonoran Desert is in a heat wave. Near record heat started yesterday and continues through tomorrow, it was 86 F here at the campground today. It feels good! Night time lows are much warmer too. I don’t suppose it will last too long. I have had many nights of clouds again. I wouldn’t mind so much if it would rain, but that does not happen. I have got a little astrophotography done but not much.

Vikki and I made another trip to Gillespie Dam. This time the White Ibis was there, but the Reddish Egret was not. This is the first White Ibis I’ve seen since my 2010 trip to south Texas.

A nice pose from a male Western Bluebird. There is a flock of six that comes into water at Highway Tank, this is one of them.

This is my finished IC 2169. I posted this in my last update, but now have added two more hours of exposure.

Last night I spent a few hours on IC 443, the Jellyfish Nebula. I used the IDAS Nebula Booster Filter. This is a supernova remnant that I have imaged before. I wanted to add this to my results from last year but the framing was too far off, so this is what I have. From Earth, the nebula is nearly twice the size of a full moon, but in reality it is about 70 light years in diameter. The power of a supernova is unimaginable, this one is thousands of years old.

I did some planetary imaging Saturday night. The “seeing” was forecast to be good and it turned out OK. I caught the transit of the Galilean moon Io. In this image Io has passed in front of Jupiter and the shadow of the moon is still passing.

I spent a little time on Mars too. With a C8 this is about as good as it gets. At least the polar cap stands out.

Astrophotography Birding Mammals

January Update

It has been almost two weeks since I’ve updated. Not a lot is happening. It has been typical Sonoran Desert winter weather, except for a lack of rain. There is a promise of some rain in the next few days. I hope it materializes. I drove north to Gillespie Dam on the Gila River to look for a Reddish Egret that keeps popping up. As it turned out, it popped up an hour before I got there and then disappeared again. I may try again, I haven’t seen a Reddish Egret since my trip to south Texas in 2010.

At Gillespie Dam I did get some good shots of a Virginia Rail. I was hoping for a Least Bittern too, but did not see one.

A Common Gallinule, also at Gillespie Dam. This species never shows up at Lake Ajo because there are no cattails.

The numbers of wintering Sage Thrashers is higher than usual, same for Sagebrush Sparrows, which seem to be very common in the right habitat. Last winter both species were hard to find.

The south end of a north bound Javelina. I saw it getting a drink from a tank out by Burro Pass. In town, Javelina are quite tolerant of people but out in the desert, they are very wild and wary.

This is LDN 1622, a dark nebula in the Orion constellation. I framed it like this to show the long streamer of cosmic dust below it. The red glow of ionizing hydrogen is a part of Barnard’s Loop. The obscuring dust of LDN 1622 is thought to lie at a distance of 1,500 light-years. At that distance, this nearly two degree wide field of view would span about 60 light-years.

I want to add more exposure to this, but it has been too cloudy or windy and looks like it will be a few more days before I can do anything. So here it is, for now. This is IC 2169, also known as Dreyer’s Nebula, in the constellation Monoceros. It is named after John Louis Emil Dreyer (1852 – 1926), the Danish astronomer who compiled the NGC and IC catalogues. This image also includes some smaller reflection nebulas and dark nebulas. It reminds me of M78. I think it will be worth putting more hours into a final image.

A Western Bluebird at Highway Tank this morning.

Here’s a Rock Wren that was foraging around the camper a few days ago.

Astrophotography Birding Mammals

Sonoran Desert Winter

Post author By Doug Backlund
Post date January 11, 2025

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.

Astrophotography Birding

Happy New Year

Well, it is 2025 and it doesn’t feel much different. I was in bed by 9 PM last night, as it was too cloudy for astro. I have had a good string of clear nights though. The weather here can be described as boring, nothing happens. It is very nice though.

I still have the C8 mounted and have been shooting some small nebulas and a galaxy. This, of course, is M1, the Crab Nebula, which I haven’t tried for a few years. I have the C8 finely tuned and everything is working great, tracking, guiding, collimation, focus, and this is what happens. A good, sharp image!

This is NGC 1931, also known as the Fly Nebula, usually imaged with the Spider Nebula and known as the Spider and the Fly. The Fly Nebula is tiny but with the C8 it actually shows quite a lot of detail.

This is the Crystal Ball Nebula, NGC 1514. It is a planetary nebula, less than 2 arc minutes in diameter. Perfect for the C8! This time I imaged it at 2000mm focal length, which I have never tried to do before. I ended up throwing out about 30% of my subs but the image looks pretty good.

NGC 1055, a galaxy in the constellation Cetus. It does not rise very high at this latitude. It is around 50 million light years out there. The two bright stars would not be visible to the unaided eye. All of the stars shown here are in the Milky Way Galaxy. The galaxy itself contains billions, maybe a trillion, stars.

A Pyyrhuloxia at the golf course, the first one I’ve seen this winter.

This Prairie Falcon was at Highway Tank hunting quail or doves, I guess. It flew by a lot of times and I got at least a few good flight shots.

Astrophotography

Astro

The moon is going away and I spent three nights on one dark nebula. I also decided to get out the C8 and try for some planets. It takes awhile to switch systems, so I will probably be using the C8 for a while longer. I’ve always wanted to try imaging a small nebula at prime focus, which in this case is 2032mm, versus 500mm with the Canon lens. That will be a challenge. Planetary is a different story, imaging at over 5000mm but using video and stacking video frames. At those kinds of focal lengths everything is finicky!

This is the first time I have successfully imaged the planet Uranus. I’ve tried before but could never find it in the field of view. It really isn’t worth spending much time on, just a small blue disc in the darkness. However, despite how it looks, it is very challenging, equivalent to imaging an object with a diameter of two inches at 2.5 miles distance. The inset shows the size of Earth compared to Uranus. At an average distance of 1.7 billion miles from Earth, it seems like a long way out there. It took Voyager 2 ten years to get there. In the larger scheme of things in the universe, it isn’t much.

This dark nebula contains Sh2-239, a region of star formation glowing in a cloud of cosmic dust, part of the Taurus Molecular Cloud. This region is 450 light years out there, the bright portion in the center spans about three light years.

Seeing was very good on this night, and I got one of the most detailed images of Jupiter I’ve ever taken. This is the result of stacking about 8000 video frames. Some call this the boring side of Jupiter (without the Great Red Spot), but a recent event makes it more interesting. Spaceweather.com reported two gigantic (larger than Earth) thunderstorms on Jupiter, in the southern equatorial belt. The remains of the tracks of these storms can be seen in my image, in the upper left of the planet. Read about the storms HERE.

Astrophotography Birding

Clouds are Gone!

Finally, after over a week of cloudy nights (and just before the new moon), it has been clear every night. Unfortunately, I wasted a lot of that time trying to image a very faint (as in impossibly faint) nebula. I thought that with the nebula booster filter I could do it, but I think I have met my match. I could spend more time on it, but there is no guarantee the results will be any better. What I need is a faster (focal ratio) scope, that’s not likely to happen.

Here it is, Sh2-224, also known as the Rice Hat Nebula. It is a supernova remnant, very faint, in the constellation Auriga. The first night I tried it I found that I had not centered it due to the fact that I cannot see it in my images. I tried to get it centered by looking at star patterns in Stellarium. After that I spent 4 nights shooting this and this is all I can pull out of the stacked images. There are some fine images of this nebula on the internet, typical exposure times are around 40 hours or more, which is more than I’m willing to do.

This one was much easier, the Shrimp Nebula, Sh2-188, a dim planetary nebula in Cassiopeia, about 8,000 light years away. I’ve never done this one before and am happy with how it came out. It is small and with the 500 f4 had to be cropped quite a bit but the image held up well.

Here’s one I haven’t tried for a couple of years, the Great Andromeda Galaxy. I think the colors came out well for a change.

Another old favorite, M45, the Pleiades or Seven Sisters. It is fun to get good results instead of the tedious collecting of data from faint nebula that may not even produce anything.

Another bright and easy nebula, the California Nebula. I used the nebula booster filter for this one.

And now some birds, here is a Loggerhead Shrike taking a bath. I’ve never photographed one doing this before.

The Red-breasted Sapsucker is still here. I find it interesting that it is drilling holes vertically instead of horizontal, like most sapsuckers seem to. Maybe the vertical holes eventually fill in to look horizontal. That seems to be happening at the bottom of the image.

Astrophotography Birding

The Birds Keep Coming

I’m still picking up a few new birds for the year list. In the last week, there has been a flurry of activity here, with some birds that are rarely seen in the Sonoran Desert and some that are new to my year list, now at 379 species. When I first got here, sapsuckers were nearly absent, but that has certainly changed in the last few days. It has been a long stretch of cloudy skies too, so astrophotography has come to a complete standstill.

A very nice looking Red-breasted Sapsucker that showed up at the golf course 3 days ago. Yesterday, some birders from Tucson were here to see it. It was still there this morning. A new bird for my year list.

Yesterday, Vikki and Lyn Jackson called me over to see this bird, my first of the year Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. Juvenile Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers retain most of their juvenile plumage over the winter while the other sapsucker species molt into adult plumage in the fall. This makes juvenile Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers easy to ID in the late fall and winter.

While birding in Bud Walker Park last Sunday, I found this Lapland Longspur, a lost bird. I saw thousands of them while driving through eastern Colorado on my way to Ajo, but in the Sonoran Desert they are very rare.

I got a report of an Acorn Woodpecker in Ajo. I’ve never seen one here, this species normally stays in areas with lots of oak trees. The owner of the residence invited me over to see it and maybe get some photos. Another lost bird.

Not lost, but there is a significant irruption of Western Bluebirds this fall. The numbers are higher than usual. Last winter there were hardly any around. I got this shot at Bud Walker Park this morning.

This morning at the golf course, I saw this Red-tailed Hawk catch a Mourning Dove. The dove’s tail is sticking out below the hawk’s talons. Red-tailed Hawks are very versatile predators.

I tried another method of processing and a crop and a rotation of the Flaming Star Nebula. I think this image gives a better impression of flames!

A Prairie Falcon that was terrorizing the golf course this morning. There are lots of Gambel’s Quail and it was general panic every time this falcon streaked through the area. I never saw it catch anything.

Astrophotography Birding

Some Fall Astro

I have had a few good nights for astrophotography. Now it looks like there will be a period of cloudy nights. I hope it doesn’t last long. The weather has been very nice, although it does get quite cool at night. I’m still picking up a few new birds for the year, but overall birding has been slow. There is still a good chance of getting four or five new birds for my year list but unless I decide to take a trip to the coast (either San Diego or Gulf of California) I don’t think I will get to 400 species for the year.

This is IC 405, the Flaming Star Nebula. I wanted to see what it would look like using the IDAS Nebula Booster filter. I had a difficult time getting the reflection nebula to show up, the filter does not work well for that. So I had to tone down the Ha quite bit and this is the result. IC 405 is about 1500 light years out there and is a big nebula, a frame filler at 500mm focal length.

Another nebula I’ve been wanting to use the filter on, IC 63, the Ghosts of Cassiopeia. The bright star is Gamma Cassiopeiae, also known as Navi.

NGC 281 (the Pacman Nebula) is perfect for the IDAS Nebula Booster. I really like how this came out. Located in the direction of the constellation Cassiopeia, it is around 9200 light years distant.

My latest new bird for the year (number 377), a Varied Thrush at Lake Ajo. This bird has been present for three days now, quite a few people are coming to see it.

Astrophotography Birding

A Comet and More Birds

I’m sure most readers have heard about the recent comet as it has been all over the news lately, C/2023 A3 ( Tsuchinshan-ATLAS). Apparently it was quite bright for a few days after it emerged from the glow of the sun, but I missed it for a long time due to clouds. Finally, one night I went out and set up my camera, and right on schedule more clouds came in. I could still see it but it wasn’t all that great. Compared to Comet Neowise, I would classify it as a dud! However, this comet did have a nice anti-tail and I was glad to capture that.