I said I’d be back to ‘fess up, and I keep my word – eventually, anyway. I mean, there’s still time to make good on some of those things in my past…
In this case, however, we’re talking about the month-end abstract. But first, another image from the same session, to see if this helps things along any.
Is it more evident now? I can’t know if it helps, or how much – I was there, of course, and responsible for the very abstract nature of the images. Had I taken them straight, it might have been a little more evident.
Last chance to figure out either or both, before we move down to the reveal.
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We had a lot of scrap lumber to get rid of, which would have necessitated a trip to the landfill, but we also had a fire pit, and I’m a guy, so the obvious solution was to simply burn it off. I’d spent a few hours in the afternoon continually feeding wood into the little bowl of a pit that we have, then let it die down for the night. Much later, I went out to check and see how well the remaining charcoal was burning off, knowing that it might remain hot coals completely overnight. Stirring around the ashes produced quite a bit of heat and a nice bright glow, and the appeal was obvious. I got the camera and tripod, and with a few frames determined the best length of exposure. Then I started experimenting.
The month-end shot yesterday was a 20-second exposure while slowly zooming the 18-135 lens in, thus the streaks. You’ll notice the ‘dotted’ nature of most of the streaks, which came from the lens itself; still photo lenses aren’t made like video lenses, with a buttery smooth zoom function, and so they tend to be slightly ‘sticky’ or ‘grabby’ as they’re turned, and that’s what you’re seeing: tiny little jerks and twitches as I attempted to move the zoom ring as smoothly as possible. I actually went back in and tried it with an older lens, a manual focus Vivitar 28-200 that has a push-pull zoom, but it doesn’t maintain constant focus (this close, anyway) while doing so, and the effect of getting softer as it got larger wasn’t better than what I posted yesterday.
And now the pic above. It shouldn’t be too hard to figure out, given what I just said, but instead of tracking the zoom, I let it be and simply leaned over and blew heartily into the embers themselves; all those squiggles are sparks flying free. I did make it a point to blow in a couple different directions, to even things up. I also did a few frames where I stirred around the embers during a long exposure, but believe it or not, the effect was barely noticeable – the embers moved too quickly during stirring to produce much blur, the majority of the exposure coming when they were still.
But maybe it gives you some ideas for your own experiments, so have at it!
And so we find ourselves at the end of a slowish and lackluster month, which needs to be saved by the end-of-month abstract – a tall order, for sure. Will it be able to rescue us from this dismal month? Let’s see:
Well, that’s certainly… dynamic, I guess. Intriguing. I dunno, what would you call it?
In fact, I’m not going to tell you what this is, even though I knew it would make the month-end the moment I unloaded the card. Well, not the moment, because I had to rename the files and open the thumbnail program, but when I saw it in detail at least. One of many experiments, this one seemed to be the best.
Oh, I’ll be back shortly to tell you what, exactly, this is, but I’ll give you time to figure it out on your own first. I’ll provide a clue, though: it’s not very big, and not very small. I had time to work, but in a few hours the opportunity was gone.
So, it’s more of the same images that I get every spring, because they’re all on Walkabout Estates, but it’s what I could get today and it’s cheery, so deal. It’s not pics of food or me dancing in a halter top, you know? Okay then.
One of the azalea bushes out front is in full bloom, while the other, which is right alongside, the same species, and planted at the same time, has only two open blossoms and the rest still buds. Go figure. It’s like that neighbor that’s always the first to get the Halloween decorations up.
Meanwhile, out back, we have even less.
This is from the white azalea bush, which is huge and healthy, just not ready to bloom yet. It always does very well, but it runs later than the others, usually about the time that the mantids hatch (which I hope doesn’t take place while I’m away, but if given the choice between mantids and the eclipse, well…)
The tall ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba,) planted in the yard, is slowly starting to stretch out.
You can see the indications that pine pollen season is well underway, and a little yellow thing that might be an arthropod, and might not – I didn’t see it when I was getting the shot, but I also wasn’t using the macro lens. The tree seems happy with its location, so we’re pleased with it, but it stands in marked contrast to the potted, dwarf ginkgos that spent the winter in the greenhouse.
It wasn’t actually banging on the glass, which isn’t glass anyway, but that was the impression that I got. It and its sibling will probably move out in about two weeks – we still have some cold overnight weather to contend with. The ginkgos probably don’t have to be in the greenhosue, but we lost a few potted plants one year to a long cold spell that penetrated through the pot and soil, so the potted plants go into one of the greenhouses over the winter.
Now two for The Girlfriend.
In the past two days the blooms of this one started kicking it, and they’re one of her favorites because they have a very pleasant smell, despite the flowers being very small and unassuming. This goes by a wide variety of names, including Japanese silverberry, autumn olive, and spreading oleaster, but Elaeagnus umbellata is the biological name anyway. I felt sure that I’d identified it here before, but there’s no sign of any of the names in the tags, so I suppose I’d only featured the unidentified flowers or berries in previous posts. The only problem we have with the plant is that it’s a small tree, but leggy and a bit droopy, and sitting right by the gate as it does, it’s often in the way. I actually put up a simple arch to hold it up, but it stretches out over the edges and drops off.
Of course, what spring would be complete without the cherry tree?
The Yoshino cherry (Prunus × yedoensis) is doing quite well itself, shown here with some remaining late flowers (minus their white petals,) as well as a selection of developing cherries. The cherries never get larger than 8-10mm and are mostly pit, but the birds still appreciate them, so there’s a narrow window when I can capture images of those, a few weeks hence. This tree, along with the almond tree, tulips, and one of the rose bushes, has been receiving regular coatings of the deer repellent ever since it started to bud out, since the deer were far too fond of the new shoots and kept it cropped from its natural ‘weeping’ nature, but we’ve found that, by treating it early, the deer quickly discover that it tastes like shit and will only sample it a couple times a year to confirm that it still tastes like shit. Provided I maintain the repellent, of course.
[If you have the interest, it can be found here, Recipe #2 – a little involved to make, but works extremely well, and will even keep in a bottle over the winter. It’s concentrated, so mix about 1:10 with water and apply with a spray bottle.]
Naturally, we have a guest appearance by the blackhaw viburnum (Viburnum prunifolia.)
There were plenty of ways to approach the blossom clusters, many of which I’ve done before, but I liked the contrast with the blue sky best this time, along with the abstract modern-fart shapes of the leaf shadows. Had you noticed them? Now you have.
It was warm enough today, so we have some critters too.
A pair, at least, of Carolina anoles (Anolis carolinensis) have been appearing the moment it gets warm, largely because I believe they spent the winter in the crack in the wall around the dryer vent pipe, so they never really hibernated. Here, however, one is venturing across the hose that drains the overflow from one of the rain barrels – it could have blended in a little better than this, but I suspect the brown color is to absorb more UV radiation. Let’s have a closer look, shall we?
I never get tired of that mosaic-nature of their skin, even if the eye-shadow is a bit too 70s.
But in the downspout that the hose empties into, was another find.
From having seen it there before, I suspected that this green treefrog (Dryophytes cinereus) was hiding down the spout, and wanted to get them both in the frame if I could, but my maneuvering around wasn’t kosher to the anole and it moved too far away to frame properly, so we have this one all by itself. I find it hard to believe that this exposed downspout remains warm enough during the overnight chills, even when it leads briefly underground to a longer drainpipe that empties a few meters further down the yard, but any number of treefrogs continue to use it, so what do I know? Meanwhile, we also need a closer look at this one.
That’s enough to see that, even sheltered as it is, it cannot escape the pine pollen. Nothing escapes the pine pollen! Little chartreuse bastards (the pollen, I mean.)
One last, then I’ll let you go.
We received several rose bushes late last year, discards from a nursery, that got a head start in the adjunct greenhouse and have now been moved onto the deck. Despite being lined up together, only one of them proved susceptible to an aphid infestation – I blasted them off a couple times with a high-pressure water stream, and we’ve had a couple of overnight near-frosts since then, so their numbers have been decimated. The eggs seen here, however, look a lot like lady beetle eggs, which makes sense because aphids are their main food source, and if you look closely, you’ll see one aphid hanging out as if in defiance of this, below and slightly right of the eggs. Go ahead, stay right there, nothing will come of it, I swear…
So, that catches us up a little, for about an hour of shooting, and I feel more normal now. Well, normal for me…
While there hasn’t been a lot to post about, and not a lot to photograph, I’ve been keeping busy with various projects – not necessarily to fruition, but busy anyway.
Long story short: the barn-door tracker mentioned a few times previously has been occupying far too much of my time, and right at the moment, it’s not clear that I’ll have it working in time for the eclipse. It’s not worth going into all the gory details here, but two ordered parts were delayed inexcusably long in shipping (one of which probably shipped from China despite claiming that it originated only three hours from here,) and figuring out the programming took too long in itself, only to find that the motor (that one maker assured was powerful enough) was not powerful enough. I’m not licked yet; I have a couple other options available, but we’re down to crunch time before I have to pack it all up and head north to be in the path of the eclipse – I’m driving up, and have plans to capture something the day before if I can, plus I’m avoiding driving on the weekend, since I don’t know what kind of traffic to expect.
Anyway, once I get it working (before or after the eclipse,) I’ll provide more depth, and some pics. Speaking of which, I have a few from earlier that I’ll throw down here, just to maintain a little content.
Several nights back (I mean, the 18th,) when the weather was quite warm, I heard the chorus frogs sounding off down at the neighborhood pond, but wasn’t quite available to head down there with the camera. Several hours later, I was, but by that time the frogs were silent – it’s primarily an early evening activity. What we have here is not a chorus frog, but a green frog instead (Lithobates clamitans) – much larger, with a different call, though it was silent while I was out there. I think their breeding season is a little later on in the season. Still, it was one of the few things that I actually found to photograph, and dazzled by the headlamp, it held still long enough.
Meanwhile, this was the other subject from that night:
There was no doubt, as I approached, what this was; I got the sharp reflection from the eyes long before I could discern its shape, and it moved quickly out over the water’s surface – not too many subjects fit those criteria. This is a six-spotted fishing spider (Dolomedes triton,) skimming over the surface in search of early arthropods, which as likely as not right now are other spiders. This is a medium-sized example, leg spread about 35-40mm, while you can see on the water the first evidence of the pine pollen inundation that happens every spring – again, this was two weeks ago, and it’s much worse now.
One of these days, I’ll revisit my attempts to show just how well spider eyes can reflect light, thus how easy they are to find at night with a headlamp. It really is bright and distinct, and while dewdrops can mimic the reflection, they tend to shift color a little as you move, while spider eyes remain a distinct blue-white.
Now, this pic’s even older than those above.
This dates back from the 7th, when I went down to Jordan Lake but didn’t see a lot. I spotted this guy and carefully stalked it for better detail shots, knowing it was from the sandpiper family but not which species. Which is fairly inexcusable (my word of the day,) since this is a spotted sandpiper (Actitis macularius,) probably the most common sandpiper species in the US and able to be seen just about everywhere. Yet this is the first time that I’ve gotten identifying shots of one – I could have saved it for the weekly topic, though I have enough options for that. It’s likely that I’ve seen them numerous times on the lake, since sandpipers have distinctive habits and flight patterns, but never close enough for a decent shot, and even this one took a careful approach; here, it’s very aware of me and considering that, despite a slow approach, I was probably up to no good. Which isn’t fair, because I’ve never eaten a sandpiper in my life, but that’s bird brains for you.
You’ll notice a lack of spots on this spotted sandpiper, but this is fairly common; birds usually develop different plumage at different ages, as well as seasonal changes and for breeding displays. This is a non-breeding adult, likely about to molt into breeding colors. They also have a distinctive bobbing walk, and I would have shot video if I’d had the tripod (and the chance to set it up, which the bird wouldn’t have waited for.) If you really want to see it, I’m sure someone has video examples online.
But really, that’s been about it for the photos, though a few things are in bloom now and the days have returned to being clearer and warmer, so perhaps I can produce a little more before the end of the month, maybe even later on today. If that happens, I’ll return and tell you where to find the pics.
While I have numerous images of plant species that have appeared only once in the blog, I feel that most of them are not strong enough to build a single post around – I have plenty of plant images that I find strong enough, but they’re all of species that have appeared multiple times. So not only has this species only appeared once, it might be the single representative of plant species for this year’s topic. We’ll see.
But these are Atamasco lilies or rain lilies or easter lilies – all depending on what the other people around you call them, I guess, unless the other people around you are botanists, then they’re Zephyranthes atamasco. But because they’re sometimes known as easter lilies, I purposefully stalled this post to appear today, which is about as much as I’ll observe the holiday. They’re supposed to be quite common in this area, but this is the only time that I’ve ever, to my recollection, seen them growing wild anyplace, and they served as a splash of color and interest on an otherwise dreary outing. Still, I’d like to find them when either the light is better, or they’re growing among something more interesting as a setting or background.
Okay, not all that visibly different, really, but it’s not my fault.
We begin with the full moon at 10:12 PM EDT last night.
“Last night” being a little over five hours ago, but basically, before the start of the penumbral lunar eclipse – use 02:12 UTC 03/25/24 if you like. Yes, there was a lunar eclipse this morning (actually, it’s still going on as I type this,) but only a penumbral one, meaning the moon only passed (is passing) through the diffuse outer shadow and not through the distinct and total inner (umbral) shadow. This eclipse makes sense, in that the total solar eclipse is only half a moon cycle away, as the phases completely reverse into New and the moon traverses to the other side of the Earth, in relation to the sun anyway. You’d almost expect a total lunar eclipse, given how it’s going to near-perfectly align in just two weeks, but tilted orbits and all that jazz. So all we got/get is some cockeyed darkening:
This is during the peak of the eclipse, five hours further on (07:18 UTC, or 3:18 AM EDT.) Visibly darker, but not notably – about half a stop, I’d estimate, though at least the deeper shadow at the bottom is easy to discern. And it’s tilted almost 90°, but that’s because it’s five hours later on and I didn’t bother trying to rotate the camera to match (or rotate the image in post-editing.) Technically, it’s still oriented (mostly) the same way, but I was riding the planet along as that tilted. And I say “mostly” because the moon wobbles, suffering from libration (nasty thing, that,) and so it probably wouldn’t be a perfect match even if rotated to match the poles.
Excitement City, I know, but it’s all I’ve been up to recently, at least photographically. Now, preparations for photographs are taking place, as the barn-door tracker mentioned previously is taking shape, and would be much further along if the goddamned parts that I’d ordered has arrived at a reasonable time. Will they get here today? We’ll see, I suppose. This isn’t leaving me a lot of time to experiment and refine the design if there are issues (which I consider at least 30% likely,) but so it goes.
Worse is the possibility of crappy weather during the eclipse, since the northern states aren’t known for having frequent clear skies even in early spring – I’m resigned to the very real possibility of traveling up there and not being able to see a thing. It won’t be a wasted trip, since I’ll be with friends and we’ll find plenty to do, but the preparations that I’m making for this event may all be for naught. Though, whatcha gonna do?
Some subjects, like mammals, are pretty easy to identify, from a combination of few varieties to be found in any given area, distinct markings or anatomy, and plenty of online resources. Arthropods often become a bit harder, since there are a lot of varieties and many distinguishing characteristics are tiny and hard to spot. And then there are things like crustaceans, where online resources are so thin that I couldn’t tell you if a lot of species look like this, or if this is the only one. So when I say that I think this is a pelagic gooseneck barnacle (Lepas anatifera,) well, pay attention to the italicized “think.”
And yes, crustacean is correct – they’re not mollusks, and in fact are quite mobile when they’re younger (a stage I have yet to photograph, though it’s definitely on my list.) But now things get a bit sticky. When first posted about in 2019, I said these were in the Order Pedunculata, but as I was checking details just now, I found I was incorrect – they’re from the Order Scalpellomorpha. Yet at the time I wasn’t actually incorrect – the texonomy changed two years later, and Pedunculata is no more. Makes me feel a little better, because I try to be as accurate as reasonable for my posts, and I was worried that I’d screwed up back then. I mean, I may still have screwed up and these are not pelagic gooseneck barnacles, which I’m now compounding, but anyway…
When I collected these specimens with the exorbitant effort of picking up an old bottle on the beach, I placed the bottle in a macro aquarium (what I could of it anyway,) and waited in vain for those little fan-fingers (cirri) to start sweeping through the water in feeding behavior. I later found out that they don’t do this, but simply let the current or the motion of their anchoring object bring food to them, the lazy sods. Are you sure you can handle drawing it in to your mouth, or do you need help with that too?
One of my specimens was found to be discharging some ‘stuff,’ and not putting a lot of effort into that either – it was closer to falling out than anything. While I initially thought this to be indigestible sand, close examination showed it all to be uniform, smooth, and oblong, like eggs – except barnacles don’t produce eggs. You know where I said above that I had yet to photograph the young, the larval stage? I’m not actually sure I haven’t, now, but what isn’t visible, even at high magnification, are the slightest details that demonstrate that these are crustaceans, which is what I’m really after. That quest will continue, even though I’m not exactly sure what I’m looking for or will know it when I find it.
For the record, barnacles swim around on their own until adulthood, whereupon they attach their heads to a fixed point, floating or well-anchored like a rock, and then their chitin extends to make an encapsulating shell that makes them appear more like mollusks; the cirri that you see here are actually their feet. And yet, they reproduce after they’re anchored – they’re hermaphroditic and possess both male and female organs, but do not self-fertilize, so they rely on being exceptionally well-endowed to mate with all other barnacles attached to the same general area. Something else that I did not actually capture, but I’m not on a quest to photograph this as much as the mobile young.
I went out again a bit earlier to see if I could spot, and potentially photograph, Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks, supposed to be visible as twilight fades after sunset. Coming in at just under magnitude 6, which is about the minimum to spot unaided, I knew it was too faint for the light pollution in this area, but perhaps I could snag it with a slightly long exposure at high ISO? I plotted the rough location and went over to the neighborhood pond, which has the best view west in the immediate area (I’d need to be looking right around 290°.) And to provide a slight edge, I dug out a Super-Takumar 300mm f4 lens that I got long ago, because while not the longest focal length, it’s definitely the fastest I can lay my hands on right now, and that was the edge I was after.
Yet no exposures that I took showed anything distinctive, and I was having a difficult enough time, once I got back, trying to plot the stars that I captured to know what I had actually framed, to see if the comet was even close. I was purposefully keeping exposures shorter than 1/5 second to avoid as much rotational blur/streaking as possible, and so I’d boosted to ISO 6400. The result was, the faint stars were almost subsumed in noise.
But on my way back, I aimed up at the gibbous moon and did a few frames handheld, dropping the ISO back down to 400. And they’re weren’t too shabby at that.
300mm isn’t going to compare to 600mm with the Tamron, or roughly 1000mm with the Tamron and 2x teleconverter, but I can live with the results, seen here at full resolution (so cropped significantly.) This is 1/250 second at ISO 400, I think f8. The worst part is, the lens requires manual focus but the moon is small enough in the viewfinder to make sharp focus challenging, more so when the lens is stopped down, so several frames aren’t up to snuff.
Back home, I decided to give the same lens a try with the telescope mount and tracking motor again, trying to determine what was happening. This, it’s safe to say, is not what accurate tracking looks like:
This is a mere 30-second exposure, again at 300mm, so those streaks shouldn’t be there if the motor was working correctly – ideally they should be nice pinpoint stars. I get the feeling that there’s something I’m not doing right with the controller, because I can actually get it to advance and retreat at higher speeds, to help aim the scope, but I can’t get it to maintain the proper speed. There are three buttons: right arrow (which definitely advances the scope along the rotational axis,) left arrow, and one marked, “Speed.” I tried several different combinations and multi-press scenarios, and nearly all of the frames look like this – I think I got two with double-length streaks. I’ve searched online for a manual, but it seems that several different kinds of motors and controllers were offered by this manufacturer (Meade,) and no model number can be found, so as yet I haven’t located instructions or a manual. But the barn-door tracker is in progress and I’ll likely just resort to that. That one, at least, I know I can program to do what I want it to – theoretically, at least…
What do you mean, “What’s ‘NWP’ stand for?” It’s short for ‘Nature/Wildlife Photography,’ for dog’s sake! Don’t you even text?
But what I’m saying is that, despite the lack of posts, I’ve been busy, just not with… you got it now. I have a handful of photos from earlier, and two from last night; nothing to really make a post from, but some of them will appear here as eye-candy. Not the good stuff, mind you, but that bargain candy that appears around Halloween, chocolate made from wax and lard, kind of thing, but still way better than circus peanuts.
About as close as the eagles got one particular day at the lake The primary thing that I’ve been concentrating on is astronomy tracking, mostly for the upcoming eclipse. It’s been an interesting journey, but so far, not exactly productive. Lemme ‘splain.
The Earth rotates, producing most of the motion of the sun and moon of course, but also the stars and all those faint night sky objects, the kind that you need longer exposures for. This means that exposure times longer than a few seconds result in streaks from anything in the sky, unless… you counteract this rotation. Decent telescope mounts have motors that do this, as long as they’re aligned properly (which is with the North Celestial Pole, the spot that lies directly above the north end of the axis of Earth rotation – not quite the North Star/Polaris but very very close.) I actually have a telescope with such a motor – not a very good one, but it does at least have one – and I’ve been meaning to get around to finagling a camera mount to use the same tripod-and-motor combo. Which I finally did this past week.
A brown-headed nuthatch that appeared close by Then I had to play around with mounting the motor and confirming the function, which was trickier than it sounds. The actual motion, down at the axis of the mount, is ridiculously small, and to appearances it wasn’t quite working, so I disassembled both the telescope mount and the motor to clean and lubricate them, and check for problems. Still no appearances of working, despite hearing the motor running. Thinking that the batteries might be too weak (the battery pack takes 10 AA batteries,) I switched it over to AC power and ran a 10-minute test, confirming that it was indeed rotating.
The problem was, the 10-minute exposure test with the camera and long lens attached did not work, producing not just a streak, but a badly wobbly one that would cause the doctors some concern if it appeared on your EKG. Still not exactly sure what this came from, but it might have been partially due to the ballhead slipping, partially to setting this up on the deck where vibration could be too much of an issue. But I’d been playing with things for a few days by this point, doing my work in the daylight but running the tests at night, because that was when I had dim sky targets that could withstand a 10-minute exposure.
This one appeared as I drew closer to the nest opening found earlier Also note: the idea is to have this operational during the total solar eclipse, which oddly seem to always occur during the day, so I would not be able to use Polaris to align the scope, thus I was also experimenting with aligning it by compass and latitude angle. This certainly would not be terribly accurate, but perhaps enough for exposures between 30 seconds and 2 minutes? This is also what I was testing, and failing.
The reason for all this? During totality, four planets will be in the sky and likely visible with the eclipsed sun – as well as a comet! Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks will be not-too-far-away from Jupiter at the time and is expected to be visible, though this is impossible to predict accurately for most comets, more so for the randomly variable nature of this one.
Plot of eclipse as seen from Cleveland OH, from Stellarium software – comet marked by red crosshairs This is unprecedented, and a great opportunity – the comet may easily be visible through binoculars during the brief period of totality, and of course I’d like to get photos of it. I also intend to try for the comet alone anytime in the next coupe of weeks, now that it’s become visible during the early evenings just after sunset, and this is another reason to have a tracking motor – my last attempt was pretty crummy.
And there’s one more reason to have a tracking motor for the eclipse. Since all of the Earth save for one small shadow in North America will still be in bright sunlight, that same sunlight is reflecting up to the moon and illuminating, very dimly, the dark side. Which means that earthshine could be visible in the dark circle within the sun’s corona – it will take a long exposure that will bleach out the corona itself, but theoretically it should be possible.
This means thatduring the brief episode of totality, I will be aiming to get telephoto pics of the corona and any solar prominences that may be visible, and wide shots of the planets with the eclipse in the sky, and the comet, and earthshine! All within about three minutes. The comet and earthshine shouldn’t need more than 30 seconds each, probably less, but I honestly don’t know and any experiments will cut into that time – more so because I’ll be using mirror lock-up to combat camera shake, from the camera with the telephoto lens at least.
[The reflex mirror within the camera body slaps up at the beginning of exposures, enough to actually shake the camera a little, which is magnified by using long focal lengths, and this vibration will show up in exposure times between about 1/10 of a second and a minute or three. So a menu option is to lock this in place for a few seconds before the shutter opens, let the vibrations die down, and then open the shutter. Obviously this makes the time between exposures even longer.]
Its mate that exited the nest at the urging of the first But since the telescope tracking mount doesn’t appear to be a viable option right now, I’ve switched attention over to another option, something called a barn-door tracker. This is a homemade device that does the same thing as a telescope tracking motor, and has to aligned with the North Celestial Pole as well. Plenty of plans abound for making your own, and I’m aiming for a hybrid design, partially based on this one (though I won’t be 3D printing more than the gears and perhaps some brackets,) and using this page to confirm that my design is plausible. It gets a little complicated, because the movement has to be precise to counteract the planet’s rotation, and it comes down to four things: a threaded rod curved to a precise radius (dependent on the number of threads per inch,) careful measurements for radius and motor distance, gearing to produce the exact motion that is needed, and a motor that can maintain an exact speed. This is the reason that I’ve avoided tackling the project until now, because the motor has to be run by a microcomputer.
For most commonly-available threaded rods, the speed needed to drive them is somewhere in the realm of one revolution per minute; standard electric motors don’t run anywhere near that slow. That means the options are a lot of gearing to reduce it, robbing the motor of torque (and a pretty good amount is needed to tilt the weight of the camera,) or a stepping motor. A stepping motor doesn’t spin constantly, but instead a fraction of the rotation every time the voltage is applied – the more frequently you do this, the faster it rotates. But this means you have to tell it to make each of these steps and when, and this is where the microcomputer comes in. It’s not as daunting as it may sound, because there are plenty of very simple ones available right now, the most common of which is called an Arduino. In short:write a few lines of program to tell it what to do, compile this into the language that the microcomputer understands, then upload it through USB into the Arduino. And the very cool benefit of this is, should your design not be as precise as intended and not quite tracking at the right speed, you can reprogram the Arduino to compensate.
I bought the local materials yesterday, and the Arduino, stepper motor, and driver board are on order and expected within the next few days. I’ve been waiting to have the motor in hand, at least, so I can measure precisely where it should be before I start making the support boards – triple-checking everything. I expect the actual construction not to take terribly long – a few hours all told – but the various tests will probably take longer, and the deadline is now looming. If it ends up working, or at least getting close, you’ll see it here soon enough, and with luck and careful attention to detail, you’ll see the results here soon enough as well.
And if you’re trying for your own eclipse photos, total or partial, or even the comet, I urge you to check out as many resources as you can, to be better prepared when the time comes.
This time, I’m kind of glad this species has only been featured here once, never found again after the first discovery back in 2020; both their appearance and their habits are less than adorable. So of course I’m going to bring them up again.
This, found on the surface of the soil alongside the backyard pond right here at Walkabout Estates, is a shovel-headed flatworm (Bipalium kewense,) a planaria that feeds on earthworms, also an invasive species, so a double threat. Plus it can stretch out a ridiculous amount, over 20cm as I witnessed, and is sticky as hell to boot. If anyone has this as one of their favorite species, I don’t want to know about it.
Given the appearance and location found, I was initially inclined to consider it some kind of leech, but it’s no relation. Whether you consider it better or worse is up to you, but don’t pass judgment until you hear the next bit.
I took these two photos to try and capture images of the mouth, but I was going about it all wrong, because this isn’t the ‘head’ per se, and the mouth is actually in midbody, doing double-duty as the anus too – comparisons to certain distinct politicians cannot be avoided. And yet, not satisfied with this impression, the flatworm everts its pharynx onto its prey, bathing them in digestive juices to dissolve and consume them that way.
And their organs are toxic, so not even birds are going to eat them. You get the impression that someone suggested having a redeeming trait to try and achieve a little balance, and the flatworm responded with a sexually-explicit profanity and went all-out in defiance. Where is your god now, eh?
I admit that I obtained all of this information after the photo session, which is typical because then I have visual details that I can refer to for identification without, like, digging in a jar or something. Had I identified it earlier, however, I might actually have collected an earthworm just to see if I could capture this feeding behavior – I know, but it’s better to be forewarned before you actually meet me. At least take heart that after the photos, this specimen was repeatedly dismembered (despite having no members at all) because we really don’t need any of them around. And now you know that you should probably check the tags at the bottom of any posts before you click to play any videos…
