Panstarr's Comet

Looking for Panstarrs Comet: Day 1

It's supposed to be there! Alas, clouds are there, too. (We were between two lines of rain showers) In retrospect, we probably didn't wait long enough, as the sky is still very bright.

This is my dad and Daughter, In Phoenix, Az. That is also me, holding up the sky chart for locating Panstarrs Comet, crafted by Sky and Telescope. I can't find the exact diagram on their website, but here is another one they have provided.

Image made: March 8, 2013

 Looking for Panstarrs Comet: Another Day (March 12, 2013)

Back home again, in our normal nightly routine.  Son and Husband are north of town, I am south of town.  We both spot it via binoculars first, later after sunset than we had been looking before, when it is almost dark.  The boys have the DSLR camera, so they get these lovely shots:

 

Hooray!  It was a clear night, so we had that going for us.  We also have no city lights to the west, so perhaps we have that going for us, as well.  My dad, 2 big cities to the north, fights 30 miles of city lights between him and the horizon, and has been having a harder time spotting the comet.

Daughter, who was at gymnastics practice, misses out on the comet, but not to worry.....

Looking for Panstarrs Comet: Yet Another Day (March 14, 2013)

So now it is Pi Day, and Einstein's birthday to boot!  Daughter and I were waiting for Son to get off work. 

I got out of the car, just t see if I could spot the comet.  It was 7:15 pm.  I looked, and found it with the naked eye- fading in and out of my vision.  I found it easier to spot without binoculars, once I saw it through binoculars first.  It is tiny without any aid tot he eye. 

Anyway, I had the point-and-shoot in my purse, the binoculars in the back seat, and my pinhole tripod in the back of the car.  I put the binocs on top of the tripod, and the camera lens up to the binoc eyepiece, and got a few pictures of the comet. (using the video viewfinder on the back of the camera)   I was lucky that the comet lined up with an aerostat balloon we have in the sky here, so I was able to find it! (camera was set for ISO 800, 1 second exposure) 

Daughter finally got to see it, and Cavemomma is happy that all the cavefam gets to see Panstarrs, and can mark it down as a science field trip!  

More sightings of Panstarrs to come?

I'd like to shoot the camera through our little telescope, but the comet is getting dimmer.  Maybe there will be no clouds tonight, and maybe we'll have some luck.

Have you seen Panstarrs this week?

Hello Dunes, nice to meet you!

We made a really fun journey to San Diego last month for one of Daughter's gymnastics meets.  Along the way, we stopped at the Imperial Sand Dunes, between Yuma and EL Centro, along Interstate 8.  It was just a little one-hour rest break, but I think it was one of the highlights of our weekend!

The Tatoonie scenes of the Star Wars movies were shot in the Imperial Dunes,  which upped the coolness factor for the kids.  This place is so cool, anyway!

Here's some footage I put together, using our point-and-shoot images and video, and also the pinhole images I made there.

If you get the opportunity to stop there sometime, I heartily recommend it! 

This is largely an ATV recreational area, and a week-long permit is required for camping and driving on the dunes.  You can't buy the permit on site- but it must be purchased either in Yuma or El Centro.  We talked to the very nice campground host, who told us that we could briefly visit without the pass, meaning we could walk on to the dunes from the parking area, so long as we did not drive on the sand.  We did this, and had a great awe-inspiring time.

You can also drive down Grays Wells Road to an exhibit of an authentic portion of a wood plank road, which was used from 1914-1927, for the old Model Ts to cross.

2012 DA14 asteroid- learn about this very close encounter with Earth tomorrow- Feb.15, 2013

Watch 3 videos, beginning with one of Bill Nye the Science Guy, to learn the close encounter with asteroid 2012 DA14. If you are in Asia, Australia or Eastern Europe, and know where to look, you can see it with binoculars! Looking forward to any media coverage of the event tomorrow!

a plumeria of my very own

paintcan pinhole camera, paper negative, 66 second exposure, developed in homemade "Caffenol C", colorized in Photoshop

While in Hawaii some 25-ish years ago, I fell in love with the plumerias there. Their simple elegance and lovely tropical scent has haunted me ever since, especially because I hadn't seen a plumeria blossom in-the-flesh since the '80s....

But all that changed about a month ago, when the kids and I, ducking out of the rain in the Lowe's garden center, landed ourselves right in front of a display of little plumeria trees! They were all blooming! Be still my beating heart! Naturally, this tree came home with us. It turns out that one *can* grow tropical plumerias in the desert, given some special modifications!

I made this image the other day with the homemade paint can pinhole camera, and colorized it in Photoshop.

Image made July 27, 2012

Fave Lights from the Season

How I love the season of light at the darkest time of year!  I like to think of all the holiday lights as a symbol of the light within...contemplating, reflecting,  creating new ideas for the new year, and and a glowing sense of all is as it should be..

Here are my favorite photos of lights from our 2011 season.......

my family, overlooking the city lights under the holiday star up in the foothills

Our community has a very large holiday star, lit with very large bulbs, in the foothills of our closest mountain range.  It's lit from the beginning of December through the first part of January.  It can be seen from just about everywhere in our community.

We took a drive up to the star in early December- bouncing along carefully in 4WD in the dark, till we came upon the star....

 

There was a beautiful ring around the moon that night, ahead of a winter storm that gave us much-needed rain.

 

and now a light of a different kind...sunlight!

an "unofficial" copy of a 6-month photo of sun trails from a pinhole camera in my back yard

 I participated in a remarkable photography project this year, called Time in a Can, in which 40 photographers around the world placed pinhole cameras in their own locale, aimed skywards towards the sun's path.  The project's photographing period was from June 21st through December 22, 2011- from solstice to solstice.  

I have just harvested the pinhole cameras, and have shipped the negatives back to Spain, where the folks of Estudio Redondo (which is sponsoring Time In A Can) will scan them, invert them in to photographs, and have a gallery exhibit.

The photo above is an "unofficial" image made from one of my solargraphs from the project.  I didn't scan the negative, rather I took a picture of it with my digital camera, in the darkness of my bathroom-darkroom, with the red safelight on.  I'm sure the quality of the officially scanned image will be much better!  (but I'm pleased with this result- not bad for  mostly- white negative, photographed in red light and darkness besides!)

Anyway, the camera was positioned on the ground, looking up at the sky.  To the left is our back yard fence.  Overhead are the streaks of the sun going across the sky, one streak for every day of the six-month period.  The left-sided streaks were made in the summertime (the southern part of the sky)  Each day, the sun tracked a little more northwards, creating the streak-tracks more and more to the right side of the photo.  The rightmost streaks were made in December.

You can tell the kind of weather we had in different parts of the streaking pattern- clouds occlude the sun's light, and make darker streaks when they were present in the sky.  

Solargraphy is so amazing!!!

And now, a celebration of light of a different kind.....

 

Although my family is not Jewish, we do light the menorah during Hanukkah.  We do not adhere to any particular religious faith, but feel that learning about different faiths is important to the understanding others, as well as learning from their insights.  Participating (at some level) in the traditions of others gives us a window into their experiences, while enriching our own experiences of this season of light. 

 

We also participate in many Christmas festivities, as well as Bodhi Day earlier in December.

the last candle to go out on our menorah on the 8th day of Hanukkah

Hanukkah is a beautiful tradition to us- and if we don't have a personal connection with the miracle of the oil burning for 8 days, we think of other miraculous events in our lives, and appreciate what we have.

The only other light I am looking forward to photographing is our sparklers on New Year's Eve...but that will have to wait till tomorrow!

Happy New Year, Everyone!  Keep the light of hope and contentment and creativity and inspiration burning within!!

Reverb #11 Day 13: Nature Connection

What was your best "nature" moment this year?

Our community experienced a very large wildfire this past June and July. It engulfed much of our local mountain chain, and also blew out of the canyons into the grasslands and the community, fueled by very high winds and extremely dry conditions.  It was a very scary time.  Along with the hardships to those who had lost their homes and animals, there was grief over the loss of nature to the fire- and the burnt black scar left behind.

About 2 weeks after the worst part of the fire, we took Daughter's friend home after their gymnastics practice.  Her friend lives in an area that had been burned, and we noticed a burned yucca plant that had come back.  It's bright green leaves and brilliant white flower plume was in stark contrast to the black earth and skeleton-trees around it.  It was such a hopeful moment- and a healing experience!

I was moved to take a video:



There were more pretty nature moments we experienced this year, but I think this was the best one.

update on the baby birds

 

Aww...aren't they sweet little things?

Below is a video that Daughter took from our indoor "hide", that we set up through the living room window.  She shot this video through the binoculars.  I like the ethereal effect of distorted imagery and color she got with this technique!

They're gone now- they fledged two days ago. It was funny- I looked in on them through the binoculars around 2pm, and when I checked again about 15 minutes later, the nest was empty. There was no feathers around or other signs of struggle, so we presume the neighborhood cats didn't get to them, and they both flew off. Usually we see our little fledgelings around here and there for a few weeks after, but we haven't seen this dove family since.

We came upon these doves last week, when they were discovered on the ground while pruning our tree .  We used the hanging pot as a make-shift nest, and put the babies in it, near where the limb with their nest was.  We are so glad the parents found them, and continued to care for them!  We loved observing them while they were with us.

I love happy endings/beginnings!

A casuality with hope on the other side

We had our sycamore tree pruned back yesterday, and unfortunately, there was an active dove nest that went undetected, till the babies were found on the ground at clean-up.

So I scooped their little plops of bodies into a hanging pot, and Husband hung it on a limb of the tree, near where they were found .  I could feel their little legs moving in my hands, but one of the birds didn't seem to have as much muscle tone as the other, and it's wing was sticking out.  We are just hoping for the best.

When I looked out the window this morning, I was much relieved and happy....

 

One of the parents was feeding them, and both babes were fluttering their wings...

Oh happy day!  They've been found by Mom and Dad, and are being fed!

I took these pictures through the blinds from inside the house, but hope to get some more outside later.  I used my 75-300mm telephoto lens...

Let's hope the neighborhood cats don't discover them........

Let's have  cheer for a  healthy fledging!

studying water microbes with a laser pointer

We recently bought a subscription to The Happy Scientist, and have been greatly enjoying the scientific experiments on video.  We did one this week that I think is really out of this world!  Actually, it is in this world- in the microscopic world.

Here is a video of our following the laser microscope experiment:




We did see microbes, but overall, had difficulty in seeing enough detail to tell apart cillates, protists, and amoebas, etc.  We'll make some changes to see if we can improve our results.

As a photographer, the idea of the drop of water acting as lens, revealing the contents inside itself at about 1,000X  (according to Arbor Scientific) is just amazing!  I'm a kid in a candy store!!


I linked this post up to Learning All The Time's Favorite Resource blog hop- check out other great discoveries!

Score!!! (on rainfall)

1.15 inches yesterday!  Now that's what I'm talking about!  A decent rain!  Look how much dirt got flung into the gauge, too!  We weren't home at the time, but from where the leftover debris stands, it flooded nearly to the door.

 

source: US Drought Monitor

We're still in the "extreme" drought category, where we have been since March.  One new fire started in a mountain range to the east of us this week, caused  by lightning.  No new fires close to home though, thank goodness.

Please accept my injection of hope, all of you out there enduring extreme heat and exceptional drought conditions!  I hope the Fall and Winter bring us all moisture!

a "batty" experience at the hummingbird feeder...

A group of bats have been feeding at our hummingbird feeders this past week. Here is video footage from our camcorder on infrared setting, beginning at around 9pm.

The footage includes close-up shots (you can see the bats' mouths open as they feed) as well as shots that are panned out to see the bats flying in to feed.

If you rather see a quick video of the most active footage, go here.

Arizona has 3 nectar-feeding species of bats, and this could be the lesser long-nosed bat.   They are here from August to October, on their way back down to their winter home in southern Mexico.  The lesser long-nosed bat has one young per year.

You might ask, how do you suspect that you have bats coming in at night?  Well, your full feeder is mysteriously empty in the morning.  Hmmmm!  After that happened to us a few times, we decided to investigate into the darkness with this video.  We were rewarded with this great show above.

Planting agaves in the desert

We were 4 of over 100 volunteers, and National Parks Service staff, that planted 1100 agaves at Coronado National Memorial, (in southeastern Arizona) on Saturday.  (-:

The planting occurred to replace agave plants destroyed in the Monument Fire of June, 2011, and by making the international border fence earlier. (we live quite close to the US-Mexico border)

The video includes discussion on the lesser long-nosed bat, which feeds on the nectar of the agaves, and distributes it's seeds. Footage of planting the agaves is also included.

Please enjoy- this is a video made from our personal footage.  There is good information handy to know in the video, too!

We had a great time, and learned a lot about agaves, and the lesser long-nosed bat.  It feels good to be able to give to our community  as it recovers from this fire, and I hope we have more opportunities to do so.

Southwest Wings!

mountain short horned lizard

It's here!  Our local annual nature festival, Southwest Wings is going on over at Cochise College this week.  There are many free talks on biology (individual families and species). botany, archeology, entomology, birding, watershed studies, etc.  There are also exhibits and displays, and some live animals and buggy critters.  We look forward to the festival each year.

rattlesnake head

Yesterday we attended a talk by Vincent Pinto called "Stingers, Thorns and Fangs", regarding all of the poky, sharp, poisonous and venomous things in our corner here in southeastern Arizona.  (many regard Cochise County as the most venomous county in North America!)  It is good to be educated about what is dangerous, what is not, what is safe to touch, what is not, what natural remedies can be found to help, and what to do for first aid.

desert hairy scorpion

It was an excellent presentation, followed by a field trip with Vincent to go find some plants, bugs, and animals out in the desert afterwords. (we didn't go on this part)
If you ever have the opportunity to attend of of Vincent's talks, I'd highly recommend it.

We also attended a talk/film showing of Charles Melton's documentary of hummingbirds of the Americas.  It was good information on different hummingbird species, their behaviors, special adaptations,and their habitats.

Also at the festival was Arizona Hummingbird Disaster Relief, which was distributing free hummingbird feeders and nectar for folks to hang up at their residences.  Because the Monument Fire of our area, (and other wildfires that occurred in Arizona earlier this summer) much of the habitats for animals (including our migrating and resident hummingbirds) have been burnt, and therefore, unavailable for at least this season.  (and for perhaps several seasons to come).

 
We put our feeder on the front porch, and it is being visited already this morning.  (-:

Today: watershed and mammal talks!

singin' in the rain....

Tropical storm moisture brought a birdbath-ful  of rain....

 

Son forgot that neighbor's cat (whom he is taking care of while they vacation) was still outside...

so the rainy search was on.......

She showed up later...completely dry.  I can't say that for my crew...

 

Oh but the rain is magical in our desert home....

filled with watery jewels...

and quiet contentment on the porch

riaprian sounds

Whenever asked which sense I would choose to keep, when the choice is between hearing and seeing, I say I'd like to keep my hearing.  Even though I am a photographer, I say this.  If I weren't such a visual person, and couldn't see vivid pictures in my head, I might choose otherwise.

But to not hear my children's voices or music, or nature sounds, would be very hard on me.  I think I would go crazy in a silent world.



So here in my forties, when I am noticing decline in both senses, I make lots of pictures, and record lots of sounds.  Perhaps this stockpile will be even more meaningful to me later than now, if I should loose either sense in the future.

We visited our local riparian area yesterday, where the San Pedro River winds northwards through the desert from Mexico to the Santa Cruz River in Arizona.
Cottonwood trees are plentiful, as well as many species of migrating and local birds,
beaver, bobcat, coyote, snakes (venomous and otherwise) and other reptiles and bugs.  Here are a few sound recordings.  Please enjoy, and close your eyes if you like.  Do you know any of these birds by ear?





I placed our audio recorder at the base of a hummingbird feeder, next to a gentle giant cottonwood tree, whom we have named "Steve".






Here is another recording a few feet away, right under Steve's enormous network of branches...

We will be attending a birding and nature festival next week, and I hope we will know more of the birds in these audio recordings after a "birding by ear" class.  

How about you?  Which sense would you be more inclined to preserve, your hearing or your sight, if given the choice?