I was a teenage sun

Al Denelsbeck

I had a small change I wanted to make to the solar filter holder that I’d created, and it required 3D printing a new part – so of course, the printer started printing very undependably and in a weird manner, and it took me no small amount of time to find it and fix it. Once I’d done so and finally got the new part printed and ready, the sun viewing conditions went to crap.

So finally, this afternoon, there were some breaks in the clouds and I made the attempt.

sun breaking through clouds seen through solar filter, with some sunspots beginning to be visible
It should be said that, naturally, just about the entire sky was devoid of clouds except for right where the sun was – and those were quite slow-moving. But it was better than this morning’s overcast, and complete openings did slide past from time to time. I finally got some unobscured images of the sun’s face.

sun through solar filter showing numerous sunspots of varying sizes
That’s… a lot of sunspots; Over a dozen active regions, when seen in high resolution. Sunspots are indications of heightened coronal activity, which produces solar arcs and prominences (which I’m not going to capture without some very specialized and expensive filters,) as well as the charged particles that produce the Aurora Borealis and Australis. This explains why I’ve been getting aurora alerts on my phone for the past several days, even when they didn’t look likely to reach down to these latitudes. Tonight, however, might be different. Plus we’re still in the Pleiades active period.

I feel obligated to tell you that I named the above image, “Clearasol.” You can’t compete and you know it.

Scattered, with total disregard

Al Denelsbeck

I think these are the last of the random images, though I still have a collection of thematic pics from before the trip, but I’ve been involved in other things right now and have been neglecting my sworn duties to provide content that no one reads, so we’re gonna have this and be thankful. Right?

solar halo from cirrus ice crystals
When down at the lake one day, not even sure which right now, I glanced up and realized that the conditions had provided for a distinct solar halo. These are semi-common, just often going unnoticed because what kind of idiot stares into the sun? They’re formed from high-altitude ice crystals, typically in cirrus clouds as seen here, somewhere between five and ten kilometers (16,000-32,000 feet – rough conversion for convenience, don’t waste your time.) They’re often called 22° halos because that’s how wide they span, refracting through the ice much like rainbows do, with one principle difference: rainbows appear opposite the sun, since the light reflects from the curved back surface of the water drops after passing through, and gets refracted on the way back out, while sun halos surround the sun (from our perspective, anyway) because of ice crystals that allow the light to pass through them while still refracting it into a prism. This becomes a little more obvious with some tweaking.

sun halo with heightened contrast to display refracted colors better
Boosting contrast hugely brings out the colors that I could see faintly but washed out in the initial exposure settings. It also brought out some prismatic colors from the spikes around the sun itself, but I feel confident saying this was a lens effect rather than atmospheric, possibly even meaning I was due for a lens cleaning.

This is a simple example, and the more common types are sundogs, which can be spotted often. But such halo effects can be pretty elaborate in the right conditions.

Just once, part 32

Al Denelsbeck

black-capped squirrel monkey Saimiri boliviensis requesting a gift of a film can
First, a bit of trivial nonsense (like this is somehow different from the rest of the content.) When creating these ‘Just Once’ posts, I used to determine what photo to look for in the thousands that exist in the blog library alone by right-clicking to download and seeing what name it wanted to save as; this is now impossible since I disabled right-clicking at the server level. I could always go back into the folders for 2017, when this first appeared, and skim through the only-hundreds of images therein, but I’m lazy, plus I had some ideas. So I simply put a few terms into the media library search field within the blog admin pages themselves. The first was, naturally, “squirrel,” since you undoubtedly recognized this as a black-capped squirrel monkey (Saimiri boliviensis,) but that did not turn up this image. Then I tried “beseech,” since I vaguely remembered using that to describe the actions of the monkey, but that didn’t work either. Then I tried, “please,” which pulled up the photo, since it’s titled, “PleaseSah.jpg.” I’m lousy at remembering people’s names, but I can dredge up shit like that.

Anyway, this squirrel monkey was in the Brevard Zoo in north Melbourne, Florida, sometime in 1999. This was back in the days of film and I was switching out rolls when the monkey spotted the film can and desperately wanted it, seeming to recognize it. I did not offer the can, but took advantage of the pose, perhaps rather crassly. Nowadays, this image puts me in mind of someone running for office from prison, don’t ask me why…

There’s something odd that occurred to me as I considered this photo for the post, and I’m not sure if it’s only me. Smaller primates like this don’t stir much ‘social recognition’ or ‘fellow feelings,’ despite being a primate that’s closer to us than most other animals; they don’t look much like us or even act in such ways, unlike gorillas and chimpanzees for instance. But we (or I, at least) get stronger feelings of such ‘communication’ and even ‘family’ from cats, and I’m sure others do for dogs, despite the fact that they’re very much different from us in appearance and behavior and have far less recognizable expressions, much further than the monkeys. Is this because we’re so used to domestic animals and have conditioned ourselves to their traits, or is it because the monkeys behave too radically, often hyperactive and a bit manic? Or is it a variation of the ‘uncanny valley‘ effect, where ‘close but not close enough’ makes us distinctly uncomfortable? There’s a paper in there somewhere, at least if I’m not the only one, but it probably should be written by someone edumacated…

Zero for five

Al Denelsbeck

For the past several days, I’ve been far, far away (well, about 150 minutes anyway,) attending a conference, something that’s been building for a while now. I do have to say, it went quite well, and if things go as hoped, this is only the start.

I’ve hinted at this before, and intend to go into it in detail in a few posts (from my own perspective, of course,) but the gist of it is, my friend Dan Palmer created a new playing card deck, and I was enlisted to do the graphics end of it, contributing snarky comments, rejected names, and bothersome questions pro bono. Along the way, Dan wrote a paper on the physics of the deck and submitted it for consideration of the Bridges 2024 Conference on mathematical connections in art, music, architecture, and culture, for which it was accepted and he was invited to give a short presentation there. I was invited along even though I’m inept on all five counts – I think I was the court jester or something.

The comments on the paper were distinctly encouraging, and the subsequent presentation on it went over quite well. The follow-up to this was having a table at the conference’s Family Day at the Science Museum of Virginia, right in the opening rotunda, which meant lots of people going past to see what was happening, and more than a few stopping by (and playing a round!) out of interest. Out of the four-hour session therein, there were only three periods when no one was at the table, and all of them lasted less than five minutes. Not only that, but we had people of all ages there – Dan has several games already developed for the deck and they range in difficulty and, most especially, between cooperative and competitive aspects. We have a basic website for it that we made sure we had available for the conference, and this can be found here – it’s terrible right now due mostly to time constraints, but it will be changing rapidly.

We weren’t really set up to do this properly, but we did get an offhand video of Dan’s presentation, which he has graciously allowed to be public, so I include it here – it’s only ten minutes, but it goes into how the relationships of the new deck work. Dan, literally, was working on new games overnight while we were at this conference, because that’s Dan.

The Mathematics and Design of a New Deck of Playing Cards from Al Denelsbeck on Vimeo.

We have to give credit to the organizers of the conference, which had widely varied subjects and presentations, along with some fantastic art, and ensured that everything went extremely well despite Richmond’s attempts to discourage car travel. We also have to thank all of the volunteers that showed for Family Day, including the two that assisted us, Noelle and Charlie (I hope I have those spelled right – I didn’t think to check.)

More will be along – we’re going in several directions right now, above and beyond our regular pursuits, so they’ll sneak in here and there – but the response so far has been gratifying. And if you want to know more, you know how to reach me.

Dan Palmer and Al Denelsbeck at Family Day of the Bridges 2024 Conference, Richmond, Virginia
Dan Palmer (front, dark blue) and Al Denelsbeck (standing back) at the Family Day table for the Bridges 2024 Conference at the Science Museum of Virginia in Richmond; Glenn Hurlbert, one of the Chairs and organizers of the conference this year, is seated in the foreground in black.

Just because, part 53

Al Denelsbeck

It’s not Dittyday, but we’re doing this anyway, because it occurred to me a couple of weeks back that this song has a particular quality: it’s one that I can listen to anytime, and often, and not get tired of it. And I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this regard.

This is once again from the eighties – what else? – and considered one of the classics of that era, yet I’m not sure how much it reflects that era. Some songs from that time, including many of this artist’s other tracks, have a style and ‘feel’ that was common for their time period, an example of trends and pop culture, but I can’t say that this one does so much. But either way, it’s extremely unlikely that anyone next to you at the stop light is going to think you’re some old geezer mired in the past if you’re playing this loud. Even if they do, fuck ’em – like what you like and be proud of it.

We’re talking about Don Henley’s ‘The Boys of Summer,’ from 1984 and off of the album Building the Perfect Beast. It’s instantly recognizable to a great many people, starting off with a simple beat from the high-hat cymbals, damped to keep the tones short; Henley is mainly a drummer and it shows quite distinctly in this song, since the drums provide a significant part of the character while remaining understated. If I were to say to you a simple phrase like, “drum song,” you’re far more likely to imagine a driving beat with plenty of thumping fills and bridges, perhaps even a solo, but this is instead almost sneaky in its manner. Alongside that we have a lovely three-note keyboard motif that is surprising in its appeal through utter simplicity, some very restrained guitar riffs (at least two different types of guitar, but I think it’s three,) and perhaps the most eighties aspect of it, background synth tones that carry the mood throughout the piece, and really come into their own during the chorus. It doesn’t seem complicated – until you listen closely and catch how lots of simple pieces are blended together. Also, listen for the “seagull” to pop in after the bridge.

Henley’s voice fills it out nicely as well, a little rough around the edges especially in the higher notes, but setting the mood adeptly: reminiscing while a little melancholy, pining for a lost love while recognizing that it might never have been love, and he perhaps should have known better. Is the tragedy here that’s she’s gone, or that he never expected this?


There are two parts of the lyrics that pin the song down in the eighties very distinctly, and might even be confusing to those that grew up afterward. In the fourth chorus he refers to his missing lover as having “those Wayfarers on,” though a clue exists in that this is simply a rephrasing of the first chorus; “Wayfarers” are sunglasses, specifically a Buddy Holly hornrim style that became popular for a few years in the mid-eighties before largely vanishing. The other eighties reference is the opening of the third stanza:

Out on the road today I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac,

Aside from Cadillac being a bygone symbol of American affluence, a “Deadhead” sticker was sported by fans of the band Grateful Dead, a counterculture band popular with hippies and stoners from the sixties to the nineties; the message here is the clash of lifestyles, a status-symbol flaunting a symbol of rejected values – Henley considered this a metaphor for selling out. This part was always lost on me – the Cadillac that I pictured was a beat-up gunboat many years past prime, and it was simply a reminder of his lover’s musical tastes and/or convertible. It’s often extremely easy to miss the writer’s intentions in the lyrics.

So, it’s not ‘timeless,’ but it remains just as strong today as it was when it came out, and is exceptionally easy to listen to – even if it just played an hour ago. Let it flow, and feel the days getting shorter.

Scattered, smothered and covered

Al Denelsbeck

Some of you (you know, you nonexistent readers,) will get that reference, while the rest eat at real restaurants and shouldn’t feel left out. Meanwhile, we have another image from the random pile.

red saddlebags Tramea onusta dragonfly perched on tip of twig
This is a species of dragonfly known as a red saddlebags (Tramea onusta,) which I love – you could pop the common name on anyone and ask what kind of animal it was, and no one would ever come close, including probably a good number of entomologists. The name comes from those dark patches on the wings, which is only on the hindwings by the way, and determining the species showed a flaw in BugGuide’s information standards, specifically (and I’ve noticed this before) that they don’t really have them. I had to go through Ecosia to find that this was some variety of saddlebags, and then searching within BugGuide mostly brought up Carolina saddlebags, which specifically said that it’s very hard to tell apart from the similar species red saddlebags, especially in the field. However, when I checked out red saddlebags instead, they had two specific traits to spot (a clear gap in the brown portions of the wings near the body, and the amount of black on the abdomen) that pinned this down, almost certainly, to a red saddlebags. Again, not really sure how much it matters – I just try to be accurate if it’s at all possible.

We need a closer look at that wing detail.

red saddlebags Tramea onusta dragonfly perched on tip of twig, closer
I’d resized this for the blog just to show how those wing veins stood out, especially since this was shot with the 150-600mm lens handheld from 5-7 meters off, but the details revealed helped with the identification anyway – notice how the black on the tail tip is mostly on top and not wrapping around. Also notice that the head of the dragonfly, maybe 50mm past the focus point, has gone quite blurry; I didn’t choose the focus point, letting the autofocus decide, but it works in this case.

Just once, part 31

Al Denelsbeck

Florinda coccinea and prey
This week’s entry is slightly fudged, in that I had featured the species in a post a few months earlier, only I hadn’t identified it then; I determine the choices for these posts by tags (in this case names) that have appeared just once, but technically, this doesn’t count. Too bad, because we’re using it anyway – seriously, it’s a cool shot that I was quite lucky to get.

This is a Florinda coccinea, a type of sheetweb spider that typically makes webs stretched between blades of grass, as this one was, and it’s often extremely hard to even know the webs are there unless it’s a dewy morning. To get this shot, I had to be lying on my side on the ground with the camera sideways, shooting horizontally underneath the web itself, and some idea of how tight the quarters were can be deduced by the dewdrop adhering to the spiders head; this is quite a small specimen, with adults averaging 3-3.5mm in body length – that’s half the diameter of a standard pencil. In getting ready to take this shot, i spooked the yellowish leafhopper nymph into the web and provided the meal for the spider, which may have helped me get this frame, since the spider was intent on the meal and far less likely to scoot under cover at my proximity.

A closer look at the same frame:

dewdrop on Florinda coccinea head detail
The dewdrop, which is roughly one millimeter in diameter, acts as a lens here that inverts the image behind and around it, and in this case down at the bottom, it’s showing the dew on the sheetweb above illuminated by the flash softbox, which was well above the web itself (and did a marvelous job of illuminating the scene, evenly and without harsh highlights or deep shadows – go back up and look at the mottled coloration on the spider’s abdomen.) In fact, at the top of the dewdrop, you’re seeing the reflection of the softbox itself – you can see the rig better here, though a couple years later I inadvertently fried the unit, which was a shame because it was almost impossible to replace and had worked so well. But the replacements all had a significant upgrade, which was a circular diffuser panel rather than rectangular, making the reflections of it much more natural looking when they occurred.

And take your heat with you

Al Denelsbeck

July has been way too fucking hot, and while I would like to believe that the change in arbitrary labeling that we engage in will somehow make a difference in the climate, I’m a bit skeptical, especially since August has never been known as a cooler month. Yet here we are at the month-end anyway, which does at least mean we have the abstract to consider, and I’m going to do something a little different this time, since it leads into further frames that are not as abstract but still should be featured (from my own definition of “should,” anyway.) And so, we begin with this:

twisted clouds illuminated by sun hidden just below
I’d let this one stand without exposition if I thought it was a little more mysterious, but I suspect it’s easy enough to tell that it’s clouds illuminated by a hidden sun. In this case, the outing this weekend was ostensibly to catch sunrise, but the sun rose hidden by a thick layer of clouds, and eventually peeked out long after official sunrise, announcing its imminent arrival in this manner. Yet even with all this, when it did appear, there was little color to be had from it.

sun breaking above clouds long after astronomical sunrise
Just yellow. Ho hum.

A little later on though, it was passing in and out of obscuring clouds, and in one such instance, I snagged a few frames as it was semi-obscured and filtered down to manageable levels. These revealed something interesting.

early morning sun through filtering clouds showing evidence of sunspots
The only filter here is/are the clouds, which don’t seem that thick but dropped the sunlight down enough to focus on it with the 600mm lens without being blinded. And they also showed what appeared to be several sunspots, which I didn’t notice until I was back home and unloading the memory card. Intrigued by this, I dug out the solar film again since the sun was now high and direct, and did a few frames with the help of that. I will note here that this is so effective that finding the sun through the viewfinder can actually be tricky; no glare announces when you’re getting close to the mark, and trying to spot the sun directly so you can tell which way to aim only induces temporary blindness. So with one eye tightly closed and the other pressed to the viewfinder, you have to wave the camera back and forth in the general direction until the solar disc suddenly appears in the frame. But it worked as intended, and confirmed that there were indeed sunspots.

sun through solar filter film showing distinct sunspots
This, by the way, was underexposed by about a full stop, which lets the details show much better, but yeah, plenty of little spots to be found there. I’ll have to keep checking periodically, because now that I have the solar film, I have the chance to catch some really good sunspots if they appear, and we’re almost at the 12-year solar maximum. We’ll see what happens.

Too much of the same

Al Denelsbeck

I had an outing this past Saturday, once again down at Jordan Lake due to Buggato doing the choosing, and the activity there wasn’t impressive in the slightest – in fact, while sorting the images, I realized that I was taking far too many photos of ‘birds overhead,’ not only deleting the majority of them, but vowing from here on out to trip the shutter only when things looked quite promising. True action and behavior shots, excellent lighting and background, that kind of thing. There’s only so many photos of an osprey in flight that anyone needs, and I’ve exceeded that by a wide margin.

I was also amazed at how tattered many of the birds looked – not just molting, but with significantly damaged feathers, and I’m not sure if this was just a coincidence or if something had happened to contribute to this. In the case of this distant, pre-sunrise bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus,) the wings may simply be showing signs of molting, though I’m not sure about that tail.

adult bald eagle Haliaeetus leucocephalus in distance before sunrise
The eagles seemed to have thinned down quite a bit now, though I suspect that once the ospreys migrated back into the area and began nesting, the competition caused the eagles to shift to different areas – or their own nesting may have been responsible, choosing nest sites in thicker woods farther from people. We glimpsed them a couple of times, but only at a distance.

Continuing the theme of feather damage, we have an osprey (Pandion haliaetus):

osprey Pandion haliaetus in brief stoop showing tattered tail feathers
This was as close as any osprey came to actively hunting where we could see them, dropping into a stoop for a few moments before abandoning it as its prey went deeper (or revealed that it had a club.) Look at those tail feathers, though – that’s not from molting, but what it is from, I can’t say. The morning light was semi-cooperative at least.

At another location, I saw a head peeking up over the edge of the boat ramp, and so we stalked it carefully for a minute.

head of juvenile great blue heron Ardea herodias herodias peeking out from among rocks
In the long lens, I was a little suspicious of that coloration, and subsequent full-body shots confirmed it: this is a juvenile great blue heron (Ardea herodias herodias,) this year’s brood – the brownish hue and the stippling are good indications. We managed to maneuver around for a better view before it spooked off:

full-body shot of juvenile great blue heron Ardea herodias herodias showing first year coloration
This is only the second first-year heron that I’ve seen, or at least that I realized I’ve seen – at even a moderate distance, the evidence may be indiscernible. And I have yet to find a nest anywhere within decent shooting distance – I found a couple, last year, but they were hundreds of meters away, so far that atmospheric haze would soften the images, with no apparent way of getting closer. I’ll keep looking, though.

A short while later, another interesting specimen made a quick appearance.

possibly juvenile turkey vulture Cathartes aura in distance
This one was way off, so even at 600mm it was quite small in the frame. It’s clearly a turkey vulture (Cathartes aura,) but I’ve never seen one with any white at all in the feathers, so I was assuming that this is another first-year example. But the Cornell site doesn’t seem to agree: they list the juveniles as having a grey head (though immatures will go back to pinkish red like the adults,) and give no indication of piebald coloration like that seen here. So I’m again at a loss as to what we’re seeing – if that’s feather damage, it’s a lot of it.

But, another confirmed juvie was in evidence:

juvenile red-headed woodpecker Melanerpes erythrocephalus perched on limb
That’s definitely a juvenile red-headed woodpecker (Melanerpes erythrocephalus,) and I’ve watched the plumage change after the first year so I’m positive this is this year’s brood. Spotted when I heard a woodpecker drumming nearby, it flew off after a moment and a pair of adults took its place on the same limb, though they did not show any signs of recognizing the juvenile, much less feeding it.

two adult red-headed woodpeckers Melanerpes erythrocephalus sitting close on limb, likely mated pair
They were silent, and sat idly together for a few moments, then one flew down to a dead tree and revealed a nest hollow, disappearing inside.

adult red-headed woodpecker Melanerpes erythrocephalus disappearing into nest hollow in dead tree
Notably, this is the exact same dead tree that hosted at least two woodpeckers nests two years ago, but split and lost half of its length late last year, right below where the nests had been. It’s still a good candidate given its nature and type of wood, but it also may not last a whole lot longer. I watched this nest opening for far too long, getting a bit stiff and achey holding the long lens on target, but the adult never re-emerged from the hole, so I’m assuming that she has eggs in there, or will very soon anyway. There’s not a lot of point in returning too soon, not until the young have hatched and feeding behavior begins, but I do want to start monitoring this nest again – not sure how well I’ll be able to, given how much is scheduled for the next two months, but we’ll see I guess.

Scattered, far and wide

Al Denelsbeck

Ha! You thought we were done with these just because it’s been a few days? I still have plenty of random images in the blog folder, so they’ll go on for a while yet.

two-frame animation of images taken 2 seconds apart, showing immediate fogging in second frameThis came from better than two weeks ago, when the heatwave was still ongoing and the rains had just started to appear. One evening as the sun lowered, it highlighted some odd cloud shapes that I tried to capture, though the reduction of contrast in-camera meant the shapes didn’t show up very well. I only showcase these two frames to show that, due to the very hot and humid air reacting with the camera lens (which had been sitting in the air-conditioned house up until a few minutes before,) the lens kept fogging up; I would clean it, and it would return. So quickly and impressively that these two frames were taken only two seconds apart. Granted, converting this into an animated gif (pronounced, “gee-YER-mo”) did a job on the resolution and color registers – someone needs to make a better animation standard.

Worse, something that I’ve been dealing with for weeks, the viewfinder fogs up quickly too, especially if I keep my eye to the viewfinder, either tracking a subject or waiting for it to do something photogenic. Then I’m often trying to determine if it’s the viewfinder or the lens or sudden onset of old age that’s making my vision so blurry.

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