Too cool, part 42

September 23, 2020 Al Denelsbeck

The eclectic humor/cheesecake website theCHIVE is part of my routine, and it’s where I collect humor and memes to harass my ~~friends~~ acquaintances with. They have a couple of daily galleries, one of which being Daily Afternoon Randomness, and today there was this image featured – I’d give more credit but the source is unavailable. I also converted it to jpeg because I don’t use Google’s proprietary compression algorithms, which I imagine are another method of Google to scarf info from the webbernets. Anyway, check it out:

In case it’s needed, this is a photo of a digital camera display attached to a telescope, obviously shooting the moon, which can be seen out-of-focus in the background. Recognize it, especially the crater on the terminator in the center of the LCD frame? You should, because I posted it only two days ago, but here it is again for easier comparison.

From the sky color, I’d estimate that this was taken perhaps an hour earlier, “local time” (the twilight was almost gone when I took mine,) but it might well have been about the same time, just farther west than I was. You can even see the light touching the floor of Fracastorius crater. And yes, I’m quite certain this is the same day, given when it was posted and the position of first-magnitude Antares in the frame, over to the left (visible to me too when I took mine, but not pursued.)

Just thought you needed to see that. One of these days, I’ll get off my ass, get a proper collimater for my own telescope, and do some more detailed shots once it’s in proper focus. Really, it’s the lack of tracking motor, limiting the exposure times, that has made the telescope a low priority, but I have it, I might as well be using it…

On this date 39

September 23, 2020September 22, 2020 Al Denelsbeck

We’re only going to deal with two years this week – I have photos from four, I believe, but two were noteworthy (for my own personal standards of ‘noteworthy,’ and we all know how those are.) We will begin with 2006, during a visit that The Girlfriend and I made to the North Carolina Aquarium at Fort Fisher.

This is the unaltered version, but I’ve used it before after editing out the obvious distractions from the background. It’s either a European/common cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) or a pharaoh cuttlefish (Sepia pharaonis) – I failed to check the ID plaque at the time. It was the only time that we’ve seen the cuttlefish on display, and they were fascinating to watch, maneuvering around by the rippling of that fin-skirt around their bodies, wooing one another, and at one point extending their tentacles far our in front like a trunk. The eyes, believe it or not, are open – they just have very odd queasy-smiley pupils that are mostly closed against the light here.

The educational video playing nearby informed us that cuttlefish can display bioluminescence from their undersides during courtship, and we were lucky enough not only to see it, but to capture it in images as well, as the pic at right shows. Excuse the lack of quality, but let’s be real – capturing bioluminescence is tricky at the best of times, much less handheld in an aquarium (with the Canon Pro90,) but if you check, it’s actually visible in the first photo above as well, even with the flash illuminating the cuttlefish. However, the drawling adolescent that proclaimed, “That’s a squeed,” produced a catchphrase between us that remains to this day.

And now we go to 2012. I’d said before that 2012 was easily the most productive for arthropods for me, and this is a prime example.

Last week we got to see lady beetle nymphs hatching from eggs, and this shows you how unspecific time frames are to them, because here we are a week later seeing an adult laying some. I couldn’t tell you the exact species, just the genus Coccinellidae, and the action, um, wasn’t – she remained largely unmoving throughout a long shooting session. While a time-lapse sequence might have shown the process, it might not have, too – these are flash photos, and the dog fennel plant that she was using was very fine and swayed easily in the wind, so leaving the camera on a tripod with the intervalometer to fire off shots every minute or so would most likely have resulted in a lot of unfocused images.

Elsewhere on the same plant (I believe, anyway – it was a huge favorite of the lady beetles that year for sure,) we have a nymph, second or third instar I suspect, emerging from its molted exoskeleton – the bright colors will fade within a couple of hours to leave a spiky-looking black ‘bug’ with orange markings as the new exoskeleton hardens. Presumably these bright colors are aposematic, ‘keepaway’ markings indicating that the nymph is bad-tasting or toxic – I know the adults can exude their own ‘blood’ (hemolymph) to ward off predators. Those spikes on the back look nasty, but they may simply be camouflage – I’ve handled them at this stage and they’re unnoticeable, so not terribly hard and not capable on introducing an irritant to something human-sized, anyway. Just chock full of non-information today, aren’t I?

While it took years to finally capture a molting of anything, beginning to end, I was able to shoot a lot of frames of this newly-emerged final instar, otherwise known as an adult, as it was drying its wings. That’s the old exoskeleton/cocoon at upper left – they attach themselves to a surface for several days while they pupate into the familiar adult form. The wings themselves will become a translucent brown like tinted glass and normally remain folded up underneath the elytra, the big domed ‘shell’ – which in itself is not yet showing the typical black spots. But if you look very closely, you can see the places that will turn color, the pattern of spots visible though the pigment hasn’t developed yet. This entire process is of course very slow, generally taking about two hours before the adult would be capable of flight, so it’s not like I had to be right on top of things, firing off frames madly, to get a sequence of this development.

But just so you know, I have 183 images in the Arthropod 2 folder for this day alone, of the myriad subjects that I was finding. Someday history books will talk about how 2012 was one of my most productive years.

Equinox moon

September 21, 2020 Al Denelsbeck

Yes, it’s the autumnal equinox, that particular day when half of the moon is illuminated by the sun. Let’s have a look, shall we?

What, you were expecting to see a half-sphere, first quarter moon? I said half of it was illuminated, but that doesn’t mean we’re in a position to see it from Earth. I mean, half of the moon is illuminated when it’s full, and even when it’s new, just like half of the Earth is illuminated even when it’s night – it’s not our half, granted, but half.

So, yeah, the equinox has no affect whatsoever on the moon or how it appears to us, really, but this is what I’ve got today, having fired off a handful of frames before the moon disappeared behind the trees.

There’s a crater on the terminator that’s pretty distinctive and, like my attempts with Tycho, it looks like I caught sunrise on the central peak, something that was just barely visible in the viewfinder. Except it doesn’t have a central peak, and what I seem to have caught is the first vestiges of light on the shallow crater floor, because I’m pretty sure this is Fracastorius, old and flooded with lava flows from other impact events. That far wall with its tiny crater to the left, catching the sun away from the line of the terminator, showed very well in the viewfinder and became my target of interest. Looking at the images afterward, I was also intrigued by the single spot of light down at the very bottom of the moon, either a crater wall or a mountain catching the sun down near the south pole, but my attempts to find out what this was were thwarted by the very simple explanation that we don’t have enough detailed photos of that area; even the relief maps of the best source I use for plotting lunar features marks the region with ‘Unsatisfactory photography.’ Ah well…

Just because, part 38

September 20, 2020 Al Denelsbeck

I’m probably not going to get too many opportunities to post in the next week, and what will be posted probably won’t be… comprehensive, shall we say? “Hit and run” is closer to the mark.

I’ve had a lot of images saved in the blog folder, some for quite a while now – 260 total – and finally decided to sit down and weed out those that weren’t going to result in a post. Most of those were prepared with the idea that I’d write them up sometime, but I never felt that strongly about the subject; you may be looking at what I do post and wondering how badly a subject must suck not to clear that bar, and that’s fine, be that way. See if I care. But anyway, better than half are gone now, and that’s allowing for those that might still provoke a writeup. You know, in the winter months when there’s not that much to shoot.

I’ll also take the opportunity to put up a pair that remained, random images that I just never wrote up until now. Not like I’m lacking in images for this month, but hey, while I’m here…

Taken back in July but pushed off by more distinctive subjects, this is what a northern cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) looks like without facial feathers – I know I always wondered. Now, why the feathers are missing is not something that I can accurately answer, but despite the name of both the species and the state, this is the south, so my guess is an incident having to do with alcohol and a grill…

And the other.

We often have a handful of dragonflies that hang around the front garden areas, and this eastern pondhawk (Erythemis simplicicollis) got disturbed one evening in August and flew around my headlamp for a few moments before I convinced it to settle onto a plant; dragonflies have rotten night vision and always ‘roost’ for the night, but if they’re disturbed they’ll attempt to use what light is available to navigate to another safe spot. Once it had settled, I favored it with a misting, and since this was during the extremely hot and dry spell that we had, the dragonfly was visibly excited and eagerly sipped up all the water it could, wiping it from its head as the mantids will, as well as taking it directly off of the leaf. I was kind of sorry I didn’t have the video lamp handy to show this in action; I really should have it affixed more often. And now I’m thinking about whether a combined macro/video rig is viable.

[There’s more to this than you might think. First off, macro (still) photos are shot using the viewfinder eyepiece, strictly direct light through the lens, while video requires either the back LCD or an external monitor, which tends to work better. This generally means having the camera in a video rig, but that’s awkward to use when trying to make lens adjustments. The macro flash softbox and the video light are not interchangeable in purpose. I’m not thinking there’s an easy hybrid method that would work…]

We need another

September 17, 2020 Al Denelsbeck

What the hell, I already posted twice today, and cleaned out the ‘To be sorted’ folder (long overdue) – then I take out the compost and spot another couple of images to put back into it. So what’s one more post in a day, between us?

The green treefrog (Hyla cinerea) that I spotted hanging out in the ant trap on one of our hummingbird feeders seems to have made this a regular haunt, and while it would normally be out hunting at this time of night (it’s 11:34 PM,) it’s been raining all day long, courtesy of a hurricane I think, and for some reason treefrogs don’t like being out in the rain. So here it sits, waiting.

By day, it’s normally hunkered down in there, barely visible through the filthy plastic, and I’ve noted its presence several days in a row now. But the Copes grey treefrogs (Hyla chrysoscelis) have been a lot more scarce, and I haven’t seen a full adult for a while now. Until tonight.

Two meters away on a downspout under the same roof overhang, a Copes grey also sits under cover away from the steady downpour, somehow not looking all that patient. To me, anyway – you know us experienced nature photographers can read the animals like a book.

[Sigh] And now I have to go sort another six images. Work work work…

More from yesterday

September 17, 2020 Al Denelsbeck

So, immediately after finishing this post, I ventured outside to watch for the moonrise, knowing it would be a little sliver of a crescent in the twilight just before dawn. Unfortunately, there was a serious buildup of humidity down on the horizon, producing a haze which wasn’t immediately apparent until after the sun came up and the sky just became white, but it was enough to obscure any indication that there was a moon there at all. Not unexpected, really, but I try when the conditions seem right.

Being out at first light with the headlamp, though, I spotted a subject that I wasn’t after, though wasteful, unfocused me will still get photos of such a thing anyway.

On the top of one of the potted Japanese maples in the yard (we have three in pots right now, and a fourth which came with the house and has served as a backdrop for countless photos,) I found a juvenile green treefrog (Hyla cinerea.) This was notable to me in that, I knew we had a little one hanging around in the general area of the front porch, sometimes perching on the oak-leaf hydrangea by the window – but that one was once again back in its perch thereon, so this was another one roughly the same size. The overnight temperature had dropped a bit and it was chilly, so both were in position to catch the morning sunlight to warm up. I still have a handful of photos of the first one that I haven’t featured yet, so…

Here it is in a potted plant near the original maple, a region it remained within for a few days, but very protective of itself – I missed several photos because it never gave me the chance to get into position before it gained cover within the thicket of the maple leaves.

Later on I found it spending the afternoon on the railing of the front porch, a surprisingly public area for something so bashful, and did a representative photo from an angle intended to give a certain impression – I think I succeeded. The next morning, it was out on the hydrangea two meters from this spot, so I’m fairly certain it’s the same one, while the potted maple sits three meters away – not a stretch at all, but if you have a better way of telling them apart, I’m all ears.

When the sun had risen, I did some daylight shots of the first one up there, wide open with the macro lens in natural light, for a different rendering of largely the same scene.

The pupils are capable of lending expressions to the frogs that are entirely inaccurate, since it’s just a response to how much available light there is, but hey, I’ll work with it anyway: this one’s pretending to be an alligator.

At roughly the same time, I moved a brick and exposed a juvenile ground skink (Scincella lateralis.) These are exceptionally furtive little reptiles that I spot every once in a great while, but never in a manner that I can photograph them. I hastened inside and got the macro aquarium as a holding pen, and was pleasantly surprised to find it still in view when I came back out so, bolstered by this cooperation, I set up a shooting session.

I got out a deeper glass casserole dish as a pen and lined the bottom with sand – not the typical habitat of the skink, but an accurate one of leaf litter and debris would provide too many hiding spots that my subject would immediately disappear into, so I made it impossible for the lizard to hide. I fully expected it to scamper to the sides and try to climb them, dancing anxiously against the glass in a wholly unsuitable composition, but it turned out to be remarkably cooperative, staying within the center of the dish for the most part, not moving a lot, and even taking some gentle nudges to repose.

You could put this down to torpor from the cold, which likely assisted, but I had already seen how the skink was capable of bursts of speed, so really, this was more helpful than expected. I was even able to switch lenses and go in very close for more detail.

In fact, I was just missing a little bit of behavior due to the brief duration of it, which was to sample the sand with its tongue to see what was edible, usually having a few sand grains adhering to its tongue – you can see a couple still on its snout. Again, this is ordinary beach sand, to give you some idea of scale, but I managed a better one (since I didn’t have my paper scales handy, but this is better anyway.)

As I scooped it up gently to release it in the front garden (not far from the frogs,) it curled up and paused on my fingertips, and I started juggling the camera to see if the shot was possible – I’m actually amazed to have gotten it. This is especially noteworthy in that I had the Mamiya 80mm macro affixed, which requires the aperture to be closed down manually, and it’s spring-loaded so it has to be held down as it won’t stay in place on its own. This resides on the left side of the lens barrel. Meanwhile, the shutter release is on the right – you know, where my occupied right hand would operate it – so I had to cradle the camera and flash rig one-handed in my left, my thumb stretching up to the aperture switch, my forefinger stretched out across the bottom of the battery grip to contact the shutter button on the bottom of that, and still get the focus distance right. There’s no way it should be this sharp, but that just shows you my breathtakingly awesome skills. There was probably even some telekinesis keeping the skink calm during all this as well, so I got that going for me. Which is nice.

Later on that afternoon we did the kayak outing and met the beaver in the previous post, so really, a fairly productive day. I’m good with that.

Money well spent

September 17, 2020 Al Denelsbeck

… or at least, so far. I doubt I’ll be regretting it.

The Girlfriend and I take the kayaks out every once in a while, so far only on Jordan Lake (though they’ve been out at both North Topsail Island, NC and Murrell’s Inlet, SC,) and the biggest frustration that I have with this – still admittedly minor – is that I have no decent way of capturing images or video of any of the things that we see out there. This has included bald eagles, herons, egrets, osprey, kingfishers, and even a surprisingly mellow green heron that appeared to be following my kayak from a minimal distance (like down to four meters.) I don’t trust the good camera equipment in a kayak, not to mention that the stowage would be difficult. So I was simply using the $25 smutphone in a waterproof case, and you know how I feel about smutphones; this impression did not improve in the slightest during my uses of it for these forays.

So the question was, what to do about it? While I would love to carry the serious lenses along, that’s way too risky with a kayak that might overturn (or even that collects drips from the paddles within.) I started looking at the waterproof ‘skin-diving’ bags that are available, but they would at best allow only a shorter lens, and there was still the issue of where to put it in a single-person kayak. I finally decided to get a dedicated underwater camera, one with the longest focal length I could find, and had that narrowed down to three different models, weighing options against price and how often I might be using it. The deciding factor came when I found the best model available used for a decent price, so I picked up a Ricoh WG-60, which also has macro capability, should I find myself pursuing macro subjects underwater (instead of using the macro aquarium.)

Its first real test came yesterday afternoon, when The Girlfriend and I did an outing on Jordan Lake – the tree seen here may appear from time to time later on, because I like it and may do more experiments other than the quick pass that we did.

But the real find wasn’t a tree. While watching a great blue heron on the banks, I saw a branch behind it bounce violently, way out of proportion to the wind or an average sized bird, and I suspected a green heron or something larger, so we kept our eyes on it as we drew closer. The video tells it better.

We’re pleased with that, for sure – The Girlfriend has been gushing, actually. And this is probably the second-largest specimen that I’ve seen, quite impressive.

The zoom range isn’t significant, topping out at 140mm equivalent – not ideal for the eagles and so on, and it doesn’t quite have the quality of my other cameras, though this may improve with some setting and focus tweaks. I was just noodling around with it yesterday.

We were so busy watching the beaver that we missed an osprey in a low branch almost directly overhead, until it gave an irritated alarm chirp and took off. I had watched it fly around the point, though, and was ready as we rounded the bend to get this photo, though I was a tad slow on switching to video to capture it taking off again.

Like my other attempts at video, I still need to work on some things like maintaining a steady and level camera, avoiding any handling of the body while recording, and so on. Some of that will be unavoidable when I’m shooting from a bobbing, rotating kayak – the kayak retains the momentum of the last paddle stroke and will keep gradually turning in that direction, having already made me twist around in the seat to maintain a subject in the viewfinder (both of the smutphone and now of the camera.) Finding the best way to carry it will also be a project; a belt pouch is out, and even my pocket was tricky, since the sides of the kayak are narrow, and in the well between my knees or in the next-to-unusable stowage bin behind the seat are too awkward. The wrist strap would just make it bang against the sides as I’m rowing, so it will likely be an armband on my left bicep. We’ll see.

But yeah, even though I always push technique over equipment, any day of the week, sometimes getting the right equipment is what’s needed.

On this date 38

September 16, 2020September 15, 2020 Al Denelsbeck

You may be seeing a pattern if you’ve bothered to look at the previous On This Date posts and have the faintest interest, which is highly unlikely, but back in 2006 I was doing a lot of experimentation in infra-red photography, and this image is probably my favorite. Or at least, the tweaked version is. Since you asked so eagerly, this is Old Well, a landmark on the campus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill – you know, the one with all the idiotic students that helped make North Carolina look dumber than a box of corn dog crumbs…

While that point can not possibly be belabored, there’s also not anything to add to it, so I’ll repeat it once just for the sake of it – UNC students are fucking morons – and move on to later dates.

2012 was by far the most productive year for arthropod photos; to give you an example, this came from Arthropod folder 2, while a year later on the same date (which I’m not featuring today,) I was in Arthropod folder 4. Since I only allow about 4,000 images to accrue before going to a new folder, you can imagine how busy I was shooting bugs. And my subject here was part of the reason, because the lady beetles had taken to the dog fennel plants in the yard and done their full life cycles thereon, including the hatching of new nymphs from eggs, which is what you’re seeing here. Yes, cute little ladybugs start off looking like mini-Godzillas. Very mini, since they’re only a handful of millimeters in length so that’s, what, 1:1,000,000 scale? I’ll let you do the math. UNC students certainly can’t handle it.

Exactly six years ago (that would be 2014 for UNC students,) I was spending way too much time doing detailed shots of a spider known only as Enoplognatha ovata – specifically, its pedipalps, because hey, when a species has worked this hard to make something this impressive, it deserves the attention. I wrote it up in painful detail here, so check out that post if you dare.

And really, that’s about it – lots more insect photos, but nothing particularly fascinating or creepier than this, and 2014 was the latest that I shot anything on this date. Except for today of course.

[I type this, as usual, a day in advance, so that’s my goad towards making sure I shoot something today. Whether it will work or not remains to be seen – I can be pretty rebellious against myself.]

Four birds

September 16, 2020 Al Denelsbeck

Hmmm, it’s 5:09 AM with the next On This Date post set to go at 6:00. Can I do it?

On a slow outing yesterday, we nevertheless found a few subjects to shoot, and you’re about to see most of them. We’ll start off easy.

I mentioned earlier how little impact the Vulture Effigy program from the NC Wildlife Resource Commission was having on the vultures down at Jordan Lake, and a black vulture (Coragyps atratus) provided a nice little pose with the dead vulture that was intended to convince the live ones not to perch in the area. Maybe if they animated it, or made spooooky noises…

Among the subjects we were after were, of course, the osprey, or ospreys – I think the latter is correct, but you know, English rules are decided by dartboard. And while we saw a handful, there was only one aborted dive at a fish – just not an active time. But one wheeled overhead a few times when the sun was in a good position to do backlighting, so I fired off a few frames.

Curiously, the scientific name for osprey is Pandion haliaetus, while the one for bald eagles is Haliaeetus leucocephalus – so what the extra ‘E’ in there signifies I couldn’t tell you. And from experience, I can tell you that attempting to use standard English rules to pronounce any Latin names will likely result in error.

Among the first of the subjects to present itself was a female double-crested cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus,) who circled around twice before coming to rest in an old dead tree right at the head of the point where we stood – so, a dozen or so meters away. Of course we took advantage of this.

Just after landing, she hadn’t settled in yet, perhaps assuring herself that our shifting around underneath her posed no threat, but she did at least pose fartistically along the lines of the branches, so I’m good.

Later on, she’d settled in, ignoring us, but continued to survey the area, though what she was looking for I couldn’t say.

… or maybe she simply had water in her ear.

Eventually, not finding other subjects, I shifted position and used the leaves of a much smaller tree nearby to do a little framing, because there was nothing else to work with, but while doing that, she gave an enigmatic pose while looking skyward.

Best I could say is, she got separated from another, or a flock, and was watching for them to reappear. From time to time, other birds cruised by, including a black vulture joining her in the same tree, but she paid no attention to any of them.

And finally, another fartistic shot, one of the few that I liked from a pair of great egrets (Ardea alba) that danced around us in the distance. Too much time was spent shooting almost directly into the sun, washing out the sky and the colors of the birds, but this time it provided some background glitter, so we’ll let it go this time.

There! Took about thirty minutes to write. Maybe I should always force a deadline and keep my verbosity down more.

Naaahhh.

Ah, but the moon!

September 15, 2020 Al Denelsbeck

Buggato has, several times, avowed that he was going to be up, having fun shooting sunrise, while I had to go into work, but somehow I never see any sunrise pics on his blog. Odd, that. But this morning, up far earlier than intended, I had my chance. Only thing is, the sky is perfectly clear and thus rotten conditions for sunrise, which needs humidity and for preference scattered high-level clouds to make things interesting. The crescent moon is up, though.

I had to take a selection of shots, both to pin down the best exposure and to pin down the best focus. Even at 600mm, the moon is small enough in the sky, and dim enough, that precise focus is very tricky, and it takes perfect focus to get the best details from the terminator, so focus and exposure bracketing were both necessary. This was the closest I got – potentially could be better, but certainly brings out some highlights. We’ll go in for a closer look at this same frame.

This is full-resolution, at ISO 800 so we have a little colorful noise sneaking in. The shallow crater in the center, just seeing sunset on the edge at top, is most likely Grimaldi, which would make the crater to its right Darwin – it’s hard to tell when everything is on its side and I’m not sure where we are in the precession that the moon performs, but that seems to fit. The two distinct, smaller craters to the left are Krafft (L) and Cardanus (R).

But that’s not all we have this morning. The earthshine was very distinct, though capturing that required a different exposure entirely.

This is a one-second exposure at f6.3, ISO 800, which is long enough at this magnification to start to introduce motion blur, but just barely. Since the details lit by the light reflected from Earth (not where I was, but further east where it was daylight,) are still dim, bringing them out requires much long shutter speeds and the Earth still refuses to stop spinning, so there’s a limit, especially if you’re working without a tracking mount. And yes, I’ve talked about them before, but here’s the crucial bit: even if I had a tracking mount, it’d have to be precisely aligned to celestial north (Polaris, only not exactly,) and that would take a lot of fussing for a couple of shots to feature on the blog – I’d probably not bother anyway. But even with this, the details, especially the ray craters of Tycho, came out more than adequately.

You may notice a brighter spot at lower left, not too far from the terminator, and think that’s a little too bright, as I did. But no, that’s Aristarchus, a quite young crater at only 450 million years, so it’s naturally pretty bright – actually, the brightest thing on the moon. Were it actually lit by sunlight, the light would be so bright as to burn a hole in your retina, so it’s a good thing we’re only seeing it in relative darkness.

Okay, no.

In a couple of days, the moon will be down to a little over one percent illuminated right before sunrise, and will diminish down to about 0.8 percent by two PM – we’ll have to see if I make the attempt then, and what I get. Unless we have some specific conditions, it will likely be obscured just from sunlight scattered by the atmosphere but, well, time will tell…

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