Category: Astrophotography

Owls and the Comet

I went owling a few nights ago. I didn’t expect to get much but I did get what I expected, Western Screech-Owls and Great Horned Owls. I only heard the Great Horned Owls but I played some screech-owl calls and had a pair come in close. The weather has been just about perfect lately. Of course now it is the full moon time and I haven’t been doing any astro. Back when it was still dark enough, I imaged comet ZTF (C/2022 E3) again, this time with the 500 f4, giving a much wider field of view.

Comet ZTF (C/2022 E3) as it appeared awhile back. I imaged this around midnight, giving it enough time rise higher in the sky. I could easily see it in binoculars when the sky was dark but now with the bright moon it would be hard to see. A few more days and it would be worth looking for it again.

Lately there has been an invasion of Sage Thrasher. One morning I stepped outside the camper, and I saw one, so I got my camera and bird songs, it didn’t take long before I had three Sage Thrashers right here at camp. I saw two more yesterday.

I had two Western Screech-Owls calling and got photos of both. Their plumages are different enough to recognize that they are different birds.

It has been a long time since I’ve photographed Western Screech-Owls. It is fun getting out there at night and finding the nocturnal birds.

Astrophotography

More Astro and the Green Comet

Post author By Doug Backlund
Post date January 25, 2023

The last few nights have been clear, cold and good for astrophotography. Just in time for the return of the moon. I’m done for now, having put everything away until the next full moon passes. I suppose I could get up in the early mornings and shoot but it is too cold to make that very enjoyable.

M82, the Cigar Galaxy. I added more exposure to what I had from last year. I think I’m getting close to showing an overprocessed image, trying to show the red tendrils of glowing hydrogen emitting from the core of the starburst galaxy.

The Monkeyhead Nebula in Orion. Another one that I’ve imaged in the past and am just adding more exposure to it.

Comet ZTF (C/2022 E3) is approaching Earth for a close encounter on Feb. 1st. Right now, it is easily seen in binoculars in the area between the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper. It doesn’t get high enough until nearly midnight, MST. The press has been promoting this a lot as a “the green comet”. Comets in general glow green when near the sun so this one is not unusual at all. What is unusual is the anti-tail, the comet appears to have 3 tails now, the dust tail, ion tail, and an anti-tail. It will continue to brighten and should be easy to see in another 2-3 weeks.

Astrophotography Photography

January Astro

It has been a strange month, starting out cloudy a lot of the time, then rain, now cold. It is cold enough at night to take a lot of the fun out of being outside doing astro. I’m still doing it though. A couple more nights to go then the moon will take over for a while.

I’ve put in parts of three nights doing Thor’s Helmet, again. This time with the C8. I did some pretty fancy processing to make it look this good. I’m starting to think I need new software rather than a new camera!

Same with M78. My favorite nebula showing interstellar dust clouds and reflection nebulas, in the constellation Orion.

This is the Headphone Nebula, officially Jones-Emberson 1, a very faint planetary nebula in the constellation Lynx. I have wanted to try this one for a long time. Last winter I planned on it but could not even find it, it is far too dim to see in the scope and even long exposures are barely enough to show it. I figured out where it is this winter. At the center is a very blue **white dwarf star**, leftover from the shedding of the outer layers of gas from the dying star.

The Flame Nebula, actually a part of the Horsehead Nebula complex. With the C8 this is about all of the Horsehead Nebula that will fit in the frame. The huge bright star is Alnitak. Alnitak is a blue supergiant with two companion stars, all three appear as one.

I took an afternoon hike on Black Mountain and while coming down a steep arroyo I discovered this Desert Bighorn skull. This is certainly the largest ram specimen I’ve seen around here. I’m going to check on the legalities of possessing something like this and if it is OK, I will go back and salvage it.

Astrophotography Birding Photography

Time for an Update

It has been a long time since I’ve posted anything, due mostly to not having much to post. It has been poor for astrophotography and not much for new birds. Of course, this time of year is very slow for herps and butterflies. So, I just go for hikes, read books, find what birds I can and try to get some good photos. This is turning out to be a fairly wet winter and the hope is that the spring bloom will be a good one. As always, right click and open in a new tab to see a larger image.

This is NGC 1961 in the Camelopardalis constellation.

The distance is around 180-200 million light years, and its apparent size is 4’x3′; it is the largest member of a small group of ten galaxies. At this size, it is very small for astrophotography so I’m pleased with how it turned out. None of the stars in this image would be visible to the unaided eye and most would be invisible even with binoculars.

It is also classified as Arp 184 (Arp is the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies). The strange shape of this galaxy has never been completely explained. There is no trace of an interaction with a companion. There are other background galaxies about which I know nothing, the distances must be much greater.

What’s that? Apparently a hybrid Mexican Duck/Mallard. That’s a hen Mallard behind it. This bird showed up at Lake Ajo for a few days then left.

One of the few Sage Thrashers I’ve seen this winter. This one posed nicely for some photos.

This is the winter for Lark Sparrows in the Sonoran Desert. I have never seen so many in this area.

Yet another photo of a Green-tailed Towhee, which are pretty common this winter too.

Sagebrush Sparrows are in lower numbers than I’m used to. I’ve only seen five of them so far.

A Blue-gray Gnatcatcher showing the underside of the tail, a key characteristic to differentiate from the Black-tailed Gnatcatcher.

Astrophotography Birding Uncategorized

Birding and Astro Update

It has been very typical Sonoran Desert winter weather, daytime highs in the 60’s and lows in the 40’s. Perfect, in my opinion. On New Year’s Day the forecast is for rain. I’ve been on a search for Black-chinned Sparrows, which I usually can find in the mountains around the area, but so far, I haven’t found any. The Ajo Mountain Loop Road in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument is the best place to find them, but it is closed for repair until mid-January. I’ve been having some nice hikes though.

I was hiking on Child’s Mountain when I came to a large canyon, so I tried a Canyon Wren call. This one came right in. I get a thrill every time I can get a nice photo like this!

On my hike up the slopes of Black Mountain (searching for Black-chinned Sparrows) I found another wintering Gray Vireo.

I had to try the Horsehead Nebula again. Good nights for astrophotography have been somewhat limited. The few I’ve had have been with the 500 f4 lens mounted on the Losmandy. Next round of astro will be with the C8.

The Jellyfish Nebula in Gemini. It has been a long time since I tried this one. It is a difficult object, very faint and in a rich star field. Some astrophotographers use software to remove the stars and artificial intelligence software to enhance the image. Images seen online that look really artificial are just that. AI software tends to add artifacts and other issues that I don’t really like. So, I avoid doing those things. This nebula, IC 443, is a huge supernova remnant. It is about 70 light years distant and from our perspective, larger than a full moon, but much too faint to see. The bright star in the upper right is Propus, also known as Tajat Prior, and also as η Geminorum.

This dark nebula is variously known as the Vulture Head, Baby Eagle Nebula, and officially LBN 777. It is located near the Pleiades.

Astrophotography Birding

Ajo CBC and Cold Weather

I know that the folks back in South Dakota aren’t going to have much sympathy for me here. But it has been pretty cold for this area, and it has been a long-lasting cold snap as well. The end is near though as a warming trend is finally coming. Daytime highs in the low 50’s will soon be in the upper 60’s and 70’s. The Ajo CBC was held on Friday, and I had my usual unit. A Spotted Towhee was probably the best bird for me, and I got the other two species of Towhees as well, Green-tailed and Canyon, all within 100 yards of each other. Another good find was a Canyon Wren, and I got some nice photos of that. Astrophotography has been slow and cold. Quite a few cloudy nights and the nights that were clear had heavy dew that later froze on surfaces.

Way back on December 7, Mars passed behind the full moon, a rare occultation of the red planet and a full moon. I had the C8 set up for it and this is what I got.

Here’s my Canyon Wren. It was singing a lot. Always nice to hear!

Not far away, a Rock Wren was wondering what all the commotion was about.

A female Northern Cardinal, I saw the male too but couldn’t get a good photo of it.

IC 405, the Flaming Star Nebula in the constellation Auriga. I imaged this nebula a long time ago. I like this image a lot better than the old ones I took. The brightest star in the nebula is AE Auriga, a runaway star. AE Auriga lights up the Flaming Star Nebula as it passes through the nebula at high speed.

IC 348 with the 500 f4. I tried the brightest part of this dark nebula with the C8 and liked the results so much I went for this wider-angle view of the area. Located on the edge of the Perseus Molecular Cloud, it is not far from the Pleiades and the Embryo Nebula.

Astrophotography Birding Photography

Coyote vs Bobcat

I’ve had two trail cams out at Highway Tank for a couple of weeks now. I am trying for the Mountain Lion that has left tracks there but so far, no luck with that. Here is a YouTube LINK to a video I captured that is described by the title to my post. I find it amazing that something like this would happen right in front of my camera. The cameras are still there so maybe I will have a lion to show soon. The weather has been very nice and I’m enjoying the warm days.

This is Highway Tank. The water level is dropping but should last most of winter even without any rain. When I first got to Ajo the water was about 2 feet higher.

A female Red-naped Sapsucker at a sap well in Bud Walker Park. As far as photography, it doesn’t get much better than this!

My final image of M33. Astrophotography is over for now until after the next full moon.

Here’s a large crop of the M33 image, this is NGC 604. Keep in mind that this is over 2.5 million light years away! The brightest stars are foreground stars in our galaxy. Some of those other bluish blobs are probably star clusters in M33.

Astrophotography Birding Photography

Thanksgiving Day Post

Post author By Doug Backlund
Post date November 24, 2022

Happy Thanksgiving! I’ve been keeping busy. Birding, astrophotography, and hiking. Now I’m working on digging up 89 photos of butterflies for Gary Marrone’s 2nd Edition of The Butterflies of South Dakota. That will be a great book when it is published. Weather here has been cool but still pretty nice.

I found two Gray Vireos in the Darby Well area, first time I’ve seen Gray Vireos there for several years now.

I photographed this one capturing a leaf-footed bug.

A Verdin perching on flowering Condalia. I really like this one!

Male Northern Cardinal peeking out from the mesquite.

I’ve been adding more exposure to my Crab Nebula image, started this several years ago. I think there will be more coming.

Same with M33, Triangulum Galaxy. The giant nebula, NGC 604, is very clear in the lower left. Forty times the size of the Orion Nebula, it would outshine Venus if it were the same distance as the Orion Nebula. But it is almost 3 million light years away.

A very poor photo of a Varied Thrush, a very rare bird for this area. I found it by the school baseball field. This is only the second one I’ve seen in the Ajo area. I’ve been trying to relocate it but so far, no luck.

Astrophotography Birding Herps Insects

A Hike up Alamo Canyon

I’ve been wanting to do this since I got here, but my knee hasn’t. My left knee has been pretty sore since I left South Dakota but is slowly getting better. Today, I tested it out on Alamo Canyon, and it did fine. The park biologist, Danny Martin, told me he had seen some good butterflies there this summer, including Tropical Leafwings and Zilpa Longtails. The Zilpa Longtail would have been a lifer, but I couldn’t find any today. Probably getting too late in the season, but there were still some Tropical Leafwings, and I was very happy to get the best photos I have ever taken of that species. I saw some Tropical Leafwings years ago at Miller Canyon but had poor luck photographing them.

A Tropical Leafwing, finally posing the way I needed it to. They have a strong tendency to land, fold their wings, and face directly toward or away from me. After many failed attempts I finally got this one in a decent position, with the sun behind me. This species is very similar to the Goatweed Butterfly, but has a small tooth below that larger tooth and above the lower corner of the wing.

Then, miracle of miracles, it opened the wings up and I got just a few shots before it flew off again. The wing pattern is that of a male.

I found this Sonoran Collared Lizard basking on a rock; I don’t remember ever seeing one this late in the season.

A couple of days ago I was hiking off Pipeline Road when I found what I believe is a metate, a grinding rock used by Native Americans. It was the only large rock in the area and the flat, slightly concave surface makes it a likely metate.

The latest big excitement at Lake Ajo, a Surf Scoter.

Jupiter is now rising up over 50 degrees above the horizon, the highest altitude I’ve been image it since I started doing this. The higher altitude helps get it out of the murk and turbulence of the atmosphere. I tried it a few nights ago despite only average “seeing” conditions. I took 6 three-minute videos and stacked the best frames. Expect more Jupiter images in the near future!

Astrophotography Insects

Some Astro

The full moon is coming back strong now but I had some good nights over the last few weeks. I’ve been thinking about what I can do to improve my astrophotography and I think my best bet is a dedicated astro camera. I’ve been using an old Canon 7D MII that was modified for H-alpha. The images are always pretty noisy though and hard to process. So, maybe in the near future there will be change.