Most of the frustration, though

Al DenelsbeckLeave a comment

I went out today knowing that it was a holiday, which I could have avoided, but that would be shirking my bloggy duty, and I figured I’d just get it over with. For today is Lock Teasers Day, which is not half as much fun as the other kind.

What, exactly, is Lock Teasers Day, you ask? Which is stupid, because it’s right there in the name: it’s the day for photo subjects that hold still just long enough to achieve focus lock upon, and absolutely no longer, so they’re next to impossible to get a photo of. You’ll hear the little beep, or see the viewfinder indication that focus is now bang-on, and zoom! they’re out of the viewfinder.

In my experience, most of the time it’s little birds that do this, and in the new location we now have a variety of new (to me, anyway) species that qualify. I produced several examples today, on at least three different species, such as this:

photo without bird subject
And this:

photo without bird subject
And even this, an avian nip-slip:

photo of a blurred bird subject
… which might make you remember Blurred Bird Day, and true enough, I got a few of those too. Eventually, however, I managed to defeat their dastardly efforts.

likely ruby-crowned kinglet Corthylio calendula perched overhead showing only underside
Naturally, the bird showed it was better at this holiday than I was, since all it showed was its underside, which is inadequate for identification on, like, ninety percent of bird species. Nonetheless, I’m thinking this is a ruby-crowned kinglet (Corthylio calendula,) which I’ve seen before but never managed any good photos of. They’re a classic species for the holiday: small, hyperactive, and tending to flit around in more crowded foliage. This is where full-time manual focus comes in handier, because auto-focus naturally wants to lock onto any branches in between the bird and camera instead of the bird itself – where is AI when you might have a proper use for it, huh? But full-time manual focus means you can leave autofocus switched on but tweak it to the proper subject when it unintelligently grabs the wrong point in the frame. This works better when you can hold still enough so that the autofocus says, Oh, that! Gotcha, and not, Wait, which? It keeps moving, as you accidentally track off of the bird, easy to do with high-magnification and a heavy lens, especially if you don’t have a handy-dandy long lens support grip.

There were at least three species of woodpecker that celebrated the holiday today, though I’ve previously gotten good pics of all of them, so ha ha to you bastards. There was this downy woodpecker (Dryobates pubescens):

downy woodpecker Dryobates pubescens refusing to provide a profile
… which, even though it peeked out later on, made sure it was in shade and only showed its head, barely:

downy woodpecker Dryobates pubescens barely peeking out from behind branch
The other two were a red-bellied woodpecker that seemed to be disputing territory with a squirrel, of all things, but only as long as I didn’t have the camera in hand, and a northern flicker that showed only its underside as well before darting off into dense pine canopy.

There were still two more birds that observed the holiday with the enthusiasm of a nursery school teacher with a hundredweight of colored construction paper – you can’t find that kind of dedication anymore. There was this one, behaving very much like a nuthatch but clearly not either of the two species to be found here:

brown creeper Certhia americana camouflaging well against bark of bald cypress Taxodium distichum
… who didn’t know how to play the game well, because it was skipping up the trunk of this bald cypress (Taxodium distichum) in bright sunlight, not only visible through its movement and shadow, but at the same distance as the easy-to-focus-upon trunk. Amateur. But then again, it was only providing a dorsal view, which is only slightly better than the underside, and when it went around to display a profile, it disappeared around the trunk in deep shade, so maybe not that bad after all. Eventually, it did peek out for the barest chance at a pic.

brown creeper Certhia americana peeking out from edge of bald cypress Taxodium distichum
That was enough for identification: this is a brown creeper (Certhia americana,) and the first time, to my knowledge, that I’ve spotted one. The day, by the way, struggled to reach temperatures above freezing, but the birds were out in force, perhaps knowing that within 24 hours a winter storm was predicted – time to top off the calories.

One more for the holiday.

likely female black-and-white warbler Mniotilta varia flitting in and out of view
Once again acting like a nuthatch, I thought I had another example of the species above, but examination of the photos showed a few distinctive differences, and I stumbled upon the ID almost by accident, since I wasn’t looking in that particular family.

likely female black-and-white warbler Mniotilta varia not quite providing good view
This was as good as it got, but it seems to be enough to peg this as a female black-and-white warbler (Mniotilta varia, and no, that’s not a typo,) further buttressed with the details that it acts like a nuthatch, can show buff patches on sides, and is the first to arrive in the early parts of the year. Granted, this is very early, but we’re also within the breeding range of the species.

None of these birds, by the way, were making any sounds at all, so nothing to help confirm identification; the only thing making distinctive calls turned out to be a blue jay, making me realize how long it’s been since we had them visible where I’ve lived, and don’t ask me why that is. Here I was thinking, Boy, that sounds exotic, only for the bird to come into view, Oh, it’s just a freaking blue jay – have I ever heard their territorial calls before? I’ll have some shots of those eventually; where I grew up they were as common as muck, and thus I’m (still) too used to them, but they do have some pretty cool coloration.

There were a couple more bird captures this day, both new species, but they held still in plain sight and thus weren’t interested in the holiday – one of those (the birds I mean) will be along tomorrow.

Estate Find I

Al DenelsbeckLeave a comment

And so begins a new weekly topic, which will consist entirely of images shot right here at Walkabout Estates Plus, since it should be able to provide a decent array of subjects without too many repeats – that’s the goal, anyway.

Now, after deciding on this topic late Wednesday night, I went after a couple of subjects on Thursday but wasn’t successful in capturing anything compelling, and I thought I was going to have to start off with a Carolina anole. But then I went out last night/early this morning after the Quantarid Quadrantid meteors, the first time shooting the night sky on the property, which was almost entirely out of the question at the old place; nestled on the edge of two cities, with a streetlight right at the end of the driveway, and even out back there was only a narrow patch of sky visible through the trees. This place is a bit better.

night sky with Mars and stars showing through trees
I think all of those are cypress trees, but you’re looking at Mars in the center there, sitting within Cancer while Gemini is above it. A few minutes before this was taken, while the camera was exposing a section of sky off to the right, a Quantarids Quadrantids meteor cut entirely across this field of view, though probably too dim to have registered very well; it was dying out just as it would have been entering the frame I was taking at the time. Isn’t that how it goes?

But I did another little sample, because a faint haze was illuminated by the town lights as it passed through, and deserved an animation.

animation of eleven frames of night sky showing movement of faint haze
The twinkling is actually an artifact of rendering it as a gif (pronounced, “GOY-dr,”) but you can see the haze streaking through. Jupiter is the brightest spot of course, with Aldebaran just below it, Orion over the chimney, and Pleiades over the roof peak. I get a particular impression from this animation, but I’d rather not influence you; how does it make you feel?

I know, it would be better with meteors (wouldn’t everything?) but I shot 80 frames without a capture – it’s not like I wasn’t trying. If I hadn’t said anything about meteors you’d just be looking at the images for the night sky. It’s all about perspective…

First off…

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So let’s see, what have I got to cover today?

There’s the Quadrantids meteor shower peaking in a couple days (well, tomorrow night/Friday morning,) that should be visible for a few days on either side, so if the skies are clear, go for it. If it remains as clear as it is now, I may see if I can get out for the first meteor shower after moving. There were actually several that occurred since then, but I was either too busy or the visibility was wrecked, or it was too cold – there’s a limit to the temperature when all I’m doing is standing around in some dark area craning back to watch the sky. This region has much less light pollution than where we used to live, so this should make things better, right? We’ll see, perhaps.

Then there’s the follow-up to the enigmatic photo yesterday, and it’s this:

glow-in-the-dark desk ornament of a jellyfish illuminated by UV lights
This is simply a glass desk ornament of a jellyfish that glows in the dark – which also glows quite well under UV lights, which are those purple spots in the image. When I got the resin 3D printer, the prints from it need to be cured further under UV light; they make a specialty washing and curing ‘station,’ essentially the size of another 3D printer, or you can simply use sunlight, which might overcure and introduce a color shift. Or you can buy a string of UV LEDs and make your own curing lights, which is what I did, for just a few dollars. These lights also work well for anything that fluoresces under UV light, and while in the quest for end-of-month abstract images, I started experimenting a little with what was handy. What I like about this image is that the reflections of the UV LEDs look like bioluminescence from the jellyfish itself, though being offset too far to the side kinda defeats the effect.

While I was at this, I experimented with some other things that didn’t work as well.

small geode illuminated by green laser through underside
This is a very small geode that sits on a shelf above my desk, with an opening no more than 20mm. On a whim, I got out my green laser pointer and was shining it through the geode up from the bottom, which produced an interesting effect from the ‘peak’ in the middle. The resulting images, though, were only in the green spectrum and thus were extremely grainy, even with the addition of another UV light coming in from the front (the crystals in the geode certainly did not fluoresce under this light.) It just didn’t pass muster, but that’s what experimenting is for.

Slightly better results with the next one, yet still not quite what I’d envisioned.

winter ornament on color-changing stand, time exposure with moving slot
One of the recent prints on the resin printer was a globe ornament intended to have a little LED ‘tealight’ or votive light within, though I found it looked a lot better, and brighter, propped on the color-changing base for those laser-etched globe ornaments instead (mine is an axolotl.) The idea was to capture the change in colors in a still photo, though the whole cycle took about 17 seconds – if you simply let the camera shutter stay open that long, you’d overexpose the ornament and it would only appear white or off-white anyway. So I cut a slot about 10mm wide in a piece of cardboard and introduced that between the ornament and the lens, slowly sliding it from left to right while the shutter was open and the colors changing. Not bad, but you can see that my motion wasn’t nice and smooth, leading to some ‘steps’ in the colors. Some of the colors are also brighter than the others, messing with exposure.

But then I also tried it with a diagonal slot:

holiday ornament illuminated by color-changing base, photographed through moving diagonal slot
If I really wanted to do this properly, I’d find some way to move the slot at a constant speed with a motor of some sort, though that’s way more effort for a simple effect than is warranted; a different color sequence might help as well. Still, for practicing effects, it’s an easy thing to do with household materials.

From a few days back, another image of the sunspots seen through a solar filter.

sunspots on sun's surface photographed with solar filter
I apparently missed a decent display a few weeks ago, and I try to get out every week or so to see what happening, but conditions don’t always allow it, and I too often simply forget to do it. I’d intended to tackle this one better, but as soon as I started setting up, the sky began hazing over on its way to full overcast and I had to shelve it for another day. Maybe I’ll try again today.

And finally, a new video from Ze Frank:


That clears out a few things. Once again, happy new year, unless you’re Chinese, or Jewish, or Islamic, or some other stick in the mud. I mean, obviously it should only be on January 1st, c’mon…

Walkabout approves…

Al DenelsbeckLeave a comment

… of these conditions.

These are all from yesterday, when the temperature here topped 18°c – not bad for December 30th, and I think it got even higher today. A cold snap is on its way, with the possibility of it dipping below -5°c, so these pics are in appreciation, and to refer back to when we’re not going out at all.

First off, the turtles put on a display.

five yellow-bellied sliders Trachemys scripta scripta and three eastern painted turtles Chrysemys picta picta crowded together on tussock
That’s five yellow-bellied sliders (Trachemys scripta scripta) and three eastern painted turtles (Chrysemys picta picta, the smaller ones) demonstrating solar efficiency by basking in every available spot on that little tussock in the pond. Again, shot with the long lens because they’re spooky enough not to allow a close approach, plus the 18-135mm would only produce moderate results from the pond edge where I’d have to stand to keep my feet dry. I don’t mind getting my feet wet (check the domain name, for dog’s sake,) but a) the water’s still cold, and b) the bottom may just try to swallow me up.

While I had the long lens attached, I checked on the little guy on the small snag.

juvenile yellow-bellied slider Trachemys scripta scripta sunning itself on small snag
That’s the full frame, and enough to tell that it is indeed another yellow-bellied slider, but we can crop in tighter for a better look.

cropped version of juvenile yellow-bellied slider Trachemys scripta scripta on snag
Again, perhaps as long as your palm – or my palm, at least, which for the record is about 11cm – where exactly should I be measuring, anyway? I mean, there’s a little indent in the middle on the wrist side, but I don’t want to sell myself short either.

Look at that little snub nose, though! For comparison, a large adult of the same species, that had spooked from a nearby log on my approach (this guy never budged,) poked its head out of the water to determine that I had not yet moved on:

adult yellow-bellied slider Trachemys scripta scripta peeking from water at photographer
I always see that horizontal line through the eye staying level, no matter how the turtle raises its head, and contemplate how their eye movement differs from ours, but then again, so does everything else. Save for the tails of course, which are remarkably similar.

What?

The Carolina anoles (Anolis carolinensis) were of course enjoying the weather too, and out in force.

trio of immature Carolina anoles Anolis carolinensis running on splash block
While this was right at my feet, a few meters away sits the edge of the screened porch, where numerous anoles poke their heads out of the frame edges as soon as the sun hits it enough. This is easy to see from the kitchen window, but shooting from there isn’t recommended, and they won’t let me approach close enough for a good view from the outside, the spoilsports. But it’s always amusing to see up to eight heads poking from the cracks, all lined up together, like dogs on the dock looking at their favorite ball in the water.

There’s a big one that lives alongside the light pole on the front walk.

large adult Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis perched on light pole
It’s funny how they seem to have certain territories, though this may be a fall and winter thing – this one, the largest in the area, is frequently found sunning itself on the pole, and isn’t too spooky, unlike another half its size that lives in the pole itself but vanishes at any close approach.

And the two (at least) in the greenhouse remain happy, it seems.

juvenile Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis perched on heater while residing in greenhouse
This is the smaller one, perched on the heater that we have in there to maintain safe temperature for the potted plants. Notably, I got a close look at both on this session, and neither seems to have any issues with their hind toes – are they growing back? I mean, I can track these better than any other, since they live on the pineapple plants in the greenhouse, but I’m not sure there aren’t more in there.

While we’re in the greenhouse…

thick cluster of blossoms on key lime Citrus × aurantiifolia tree in greenhouse
This is just one cluster of flowers on one of the key lime (Citrus × aurantiifolia) trees – there are two trees, and dozens of clusters, all of which I’m trying to keep up with pollinating. I mean, if even half of these germinate, we won’t know what to do with all the limes, but I’m trying to be conscientious, especially since no other pollinators are getting in and the lizards seem reluctant to earn their keep in this manner.

And the lemon trees.

blossoms on lemon trees showing evidence of pollination
Even though they’re closely related (I think, anyway,) the flowers of the lime and lemon trees are significantly different, and the lemon blossoms last a lot longer. If you look closely, you can see evidence that my pollination efforts are successful…

[No, cut it out you nincompoops, I just use a broad, soft bristle brush – you just have to get pollen from the anthers to the stigma… the yellow fuzzy bits to the yellow blobby bit. Sheesh.]

… so it’s worth being out there every two days dusting away. Note that these flowers are there while the trees are still hanging heavy with lemons just about to fully ripen – a couple are the size of baseballs, no lie. I’ll show you when we pick them.

Further evidence that it seems to be working (I mean, aside from the fact that these same trees flowered out last winter in the greenhouse, before any natural pollinators could get at them, so it was up to me then too):

two older lemon blossoms showing swollen ovules
The one on the right is just losing its flowery bits, while both are showing swollen ovules, the green portions – these are the things that develop into the fruit, and I believe that they wouldn’t swell unless a bun was in the oven, so to speak.

And more pollination, properly done this time.

European honeybee Apis mellifera on camellia blossom
The camellia (Family Theaceae) right by the front door is blooming madly, on the side that gets sunlight anyway, and the European honeybees (Apis mellifera) were doing their thing. This one was in deep shade under the leaves, so I popped up the flash on the camera to do the fill-flash thing, which worked well. But then another (or maybe the same one) approached a bloom that was in much better light.

European honeybee Apis mellifera in midair approaching camellia blossom
The focus wanted to track the flower and not the dodging bee, but they got close enough to the same focal distance to make this one sharp enough while in midair, with no use of the flash either.

And it provided a nice profile, which doesn’t happen often from pollinators.

European honeybee Apis mellifera deep within camellia blossom
This is full frame, and gives the color and shape of the blossom quite well, but if we go in closer, we get more detail from the bee.

Eeuropean honeybee Apis mellifera covered in pollen within camellia blossom
I can live with those results.

So, yeah – a nice day for late December. Glad I left New York.

December gotta vamoose

Al DenelsbeckLeave a comment

I’m a little later than intended, but it’s still the 31st so we’re still good. However, my choices for the end of the month (and by extension, the end of the year) abstracts are not up to the occasion, despite my recent attempts. They are:

fog droplets in spider web
I mean, how could it be the end of the month abstract without water drops of some kind, eh? Yeah, I know I do them too often, and intended not to use this one for it, but it’s like the strongest that I came up with this month. This came from the foggy morning of course, and at least the contrast came out nice.

This one’s more abstract, certainly, but it’s cheating a bit:

odd spots and bubbles in green and purple
I’m not going to tell you what this is, though I’ll show you a bit later on. I kind of like the effect, but admittedly it’s a close crop that destroys all context. I will tell you that it’s a desktop shot, though.

And then, more of a still life than an abstract, a quick composition that I threw together a couple of hours ago:

gaming dice composition
A few years back, I got some gaming dice again after having lost mine many, many years ago, with the intention that I might get into a few games now and then, and at least I’d be ready. They have yet to see any actual use, but they’re slick anyway, and for taking virtually no time at all to do the layout, it came out better than it should have. The starburst reflection from the one die (on the vaunted 20, the ideal roll for most role-playing games) is a nice focal point, while the double-zero lining up with the pips was wholly serendipitous. The lighting, however, was intentional, using two light sources to balance things out, but professional? Shit, one’s a desk lamp and the other is a pocket flashlight. It’s like I’m not even taking this seriously…

I have plenty of pics from yesterday, as well as the explanation of number two up there, that will be along shortly. For now, we say goodbye to December and goodbye to 2024, even though I should get at least one more post in before the day is out. Happy New Year anyway, and be good to one another.

Got warm today

Al DenelsbeckLeave a comment

Surprisingly so, like about 23°c, with even some sun for a little while. And don’t ask me how they know this when they’re mostly submerged, but the turtles were taking full advantage of it.

pair of small eastern painted turtles Chrysemys picta picta basking on small snag
These two eastern painted turtles (Chrysemys picta picta) were perhaps a little longer than your palm – hard to judge while out in the middle of the pond, while I was shooting at 600mm from the deck so I wouldn’t spook them. I’ve seen too few painted turtles in the past several years, so it’s good to know they’re reasonably well-populated in the pond. No, I don’t count “two” as “reasonably well-populated,” but they weren’t the only two seen at that moment.

pair of eastern painted turtles Chrysemys picta picta and trio of yellow-bellied sliders Trachemys scripta scripta all basking on tree tussock in pond
That’s two more there, stacked atop one another to the left, with three yellow-bellied sliders (Trachemys scripta scripta) sharing the same small tussock. At least, I’m considering all of these species to be the most likely, because they’re too far to be absolutely sure about subspecies, but if I can’t tell, I’m probably not misleading you about them. Scale-wise, I can do a little better here, because that tussock is closer to shore and I can judge a little more accurately: the biggest one is likely 25-30cm in carapace length. One particular day in late summer, as I patrolled the edges, I spooked perhaps two dozen basking turtles into the depths – the pond hosts a lot of them.

One more shot.

female and male mallards Anas platyrhynchos perched on snag, with small unidentified turtle far up neighboring branch
That’s a pair of mallards (Anas platyrhynchos) of course, male and female, but the quality of the photo gives a hint that these weren’t the subject that I was after. Instead, we have to look up at the tip of that branch that sits above their heads. Yes, that’s another turtle up there, smaller than your palm, too distant to guess what species it might be, but likely more of the sliders. I had initially thought it was one of the mud/musk turtles from the size, but that carapace seems to be shaped incorrectly for that. Unless that’s only seaweed or muck forming the peak, in which case it might be a mud or musk turtle, which have uniformly rounded, oval shells – I always think of them as hand grenades. Certainly not the highest I’ve seen one basking, but still a pretty good climb from the surface.

Now, a curiosity. This guy was there for some time, while the ducks (at least six of them, but probably more) went back and forth alongside and indeed right underneath it, and the turtle didn’t budge. Had I gone down the the water’s edge, though, the turtle likely would have bailed its perch before I got within four or five meters – they are clearly not tolerant of close approaches by people here, though I’ll be working on this. Reptiles and amphibians don’t have elaborate brains in the slightest, but they appear able to instinctively differentiate between harmless ducks and humans, even though I’m fairly confident they’ve never had a dangerous encounter with humans either.

Which brings to mind a distant memory from when I was snorkeling in Florida, about twenty years ago. I saw an unfamiliar turtle basking high on a rock near where I was swimming, and was able to get quite close to it by remaining down in the water. I was clearly larger than any regular denizen of those waters (save for dolphins and manatees,) shaped differently, and certainly a different color, so it seemed that being in the water was all that was necessary. Now, perhaps if I crawled on my belly up to the pond edge, the turtles here might ignore me – maybe I’ll try that sometime, just for giggles. The neighbors can’t see down to the pond and The Girlfriend learned long ago to ignore me, sometimes even when I’m out shooting, so no worries there.

I never did pin down what that turtle in Florida was, by the way; it was a dark species, but seemed to have a grey hood across the top and back of the head, about 20-25cm in carapace length, with a fairly high carapace. Notably, it was basking on a rock that was in a primarily saltwater sound, though it did not seem to be any saltwater species – it might have been one of the map turtles. Eventually, it bailed before I got close enough to try and capture it, though I’d made it to within a few meters by then.

Missed it by… well, a lot

Al Denelsbeck1 Comment

It’s now been sixteen years since the first post right here on the ol’ Walkabout Blogoblob, and that means it’s time for the annual podcast! [This is unfortunately accurate, for the past few years at least, but I’m intending to change that at least a little.] So let’s get right into it, shall we?

Walkabout podcast – 16 Years

I’m running late, partially due to re-recording this, partially due to Audacity being very balky, but mostly due to being busy with other things, but this did make it up today, anyway. Meanwhile, some illustrations of content within.

treacherous rocks in Jordan Lake once the water level had dropped significantly
This shows those fucking rocks, bearing in mind of course that the water level had been at least a half-meter higher than this. The tree in there is the one with the nest, while the two big rocks in lower center were the culprits, that first gap causing the stumble but the rock on the right pitching me over. How could I have missed these?

treacherous rocks in Jordan Lake almost completely hidden by higher water level
Pretty damn easily, as we see when the water lever was almost as high as it was that fateful day. Seen from shore, the second rock is just barely breaking the surface, with a faint darkness in front of it showing the gulf between them, though the water had actually been at least 10cm deeper than this because that second rock was completely under the surface. You can compare the foreground rock on the shore, and the stump, between the two pics, knowing the perspective is roughly 90° different between images.

Besides, I’d waded a lot further out into this same lake before, quite successfully I might add (notice how you can’t even make out the tripod feet in the illustrative photo there,) and figured I knew how few pitfalls were under the surface. So much for previous experience.

Enough of that. How about some pics from yesterday of the red-shouldered hawk that owns the front yard?

red-shouldered hawk Buteo lineatus perched on decorative wind spinner on Walkabout Estates Plus
I’m almost tempted to move this spinner to give whatever her prey is a fighting chance, because she’s not even two meters off the lawn where she’s hunting here. She got a little bit further later that same day.

red-shouldered hawk Buteo lineatus perched on basketball backdrop on Walkabout Estates Plus
The greenhouse is on the same concrete pad as this basketball backdrop, and she uses that too. She was not quite ten meters from me as I leaned out the front door to get this image, well aware that I was there and just not concerned about it.

red-shouldered hawk Buteo lineatus giving profile shot on backdrop
I approve of the light angle, at least. But yeah, there’s not much of a challenge here, is there? Though I’ll be after video, very soon.

Anyway, have a great new year, and once again, thanks for coming by for the sweet sixteen! Now I just gotta get 27 more posts in for the 3000th…

Public Service Announcement

Al DenelsbeckLeave a comment

This is just a little reminder, for your sake and ours: Nature photography benefits from doing things correctly. Today, we’re going to talk about shooting through windshields. As easy as it might be, as convenient as it might be, despite the fact that your subject may not permit your attempt to avoid it by opening a door or window and leaning out, don’t shoot through windshields.

northern mockingbird Mimus polyglottos on fence, photographed through windshield
Here’s the deal: While we can see through windshields with minimal negative effect, this is because the lenses in our eyes have a very small surface area – not so for camera lenses. So the light that strikes our camera lens has passed through much larger portions of the windshield, at varying angles, and light passing through glass (or any transparent substance, polycarbonate, acrylic, whatever) at an angle gets bent, just like a lens does. This means some of the light coming into your lens has been altered by varying degrees, and it’s far worse the greater the angle – this is also why aquarium or terrarium photography can have issues, unless you take care to ensure that you’re shooting straight on through the glass, perpendicular to the light path or parallel to the focal plane (the digital sensor or film.) It’s next to impossible to get straight on through a windshield, since they’re always angled up significantly and usually curved themselves.

Not to mention that the treatment of the glass to temper it also introduces a color cast, which might be increased by glare reducing chemicals as well.

northern mockingbird Mimus polyglottos on fence, photographed through no intervening glass.
So clarity will always take a hit, and the color will be shifted, and overall, you’re going to get much worse results than if you get that extra glass out of the way, like here. At the same time, you don’t have to deal with the smudges and oil streaks and residue that sits on every windshield all of the time.

northern mockingbird Mimus polyglottos looking stern
So what are you not gonna do?

Happy Webbmas!

Al DenelsbeckLeave a comment

It’s the third anniversary of the launching of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST, or “Juiced” – well, probably not that last one,) and in that scant amount of time, the telescope has been making hay with the amount of useful data that it’s been downloading to us, even after being shot by an micrmeteoroid. Plus it’s produced some images that kick ass for purely aesthetic reasons.

Jupiter in infra-red with auroras, rings, Amalthea, and Adrastea
Jupiter in infra-red with auroras, rings, and moons Amalthea and Adrastea. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Ricardo Hueso (UPV/EHU) and Judy Schmidt.

JWST is an infra-red telescope, capturing portions of the spectrum not visible through normal optical telescopes and not visible to our eyes, and this allows it to photograph details that haven’t been found before. In the image above of Jupiter, the different colors from the surface indicate to some extent the different temperatures of the banding and markings in the clouds, as well as showing the auroras on the poles (that Jupiter has been experiencing right alongside Earth,) and even revealing the very faint ring system that the gas giant has. The bright spot to the left is moon Almathea, while the little speck at the tip of the ring is Adrastea. Click on the image for the full-resolution version, because it’s spectacular.

There’s a lot more to it than that, though. Infra-red penetrates much of the dust that scatters visible light, so we can ‘see through’ many of the cloudy regions in nebulae, finding the stars forming within or even well behind. This also allows it to see into the older portions of the universe, the light from early stars that has been cooling for billions of years. JWST’s resolution is much higher than any single telescope* so far produced, so it’s been finding smaller details than ever before, which includes exoplanets and details within other galaxies, and it’s even been interpreting the spectra of exoplanets to reveal which chemicals and compounds can be found in their atmospheres. In part, this is due to the size of the primary mirrors, stretching 6.5 meters in diameter, giving them six times the surface area of the Hubble Space Telescope (which results in roughly a hundred times the resolving power.) Of course it’s newer too, utilizing the advancements in digital imaging that have taken place in the intervening years. Yet it also sits well outside of any atmosphere, unlike Hubble, which is in orbit around Earth and thus has some small residual effect from the thinning air; Hubble also suffers drag from the same and needs periodic corrections. JWST sits way out there in L2, a Lagrange point of gravitational stability, maintaining a position directly opposite the sun from the Earth, and the combined gravitational pulls from the sun, Earth, and moon all balance it on the head of an imaginary pin, so it needs few corrections. However, it orbits this point, in a large enough circle to just avoid both the Earth’s and the moon’s shadows, which keep its temperature from fluctuating while also permitting constant solar power from the sun – yet the image sensors need to be quite cold to pick up the wavelengths that it’s designed for, so it has a huge five-layer sunshield as well.

Webb has something in the astronomy news virtually every week, so check it out. and wish it a happy birthday, though you’ll have to blow out the candles for it yourself, since it’s too far and not allowed to be that close to a heat source anyway.

* The qualifier in there was single telescope, since there’s a technique called interferometry where multiple telescopes some distance apart from each other can coordinate their images to produce very high resolution; since these are so-far ground based, this also allows them to average out the effects of atmospheric distortion, though it still doesn’t counteract the filtering effects of the atmosphere. However, there are plans for a space-based interferometer telescope using multiple craft similar to JWST, and when this is operational, it’s going to bury Webb’s results.

Just once, part 52

Al DenelsbeckLeave a comment

And so we come to the last of this year’s topic, with the realization as I type this that I don’t have next year’s lined up yet – but I’m typing this more than a week before it will appear, so I have two weeks, give or take, to contemplate the problem.

For now, we have a critter that’s appeared here just once, though I’ve photographed them twice; the first time was in Florida, like twenty years ago, and was actually a captive specimen, one that I’d captived all by myself, I should add.

Portuguese man o' war Physalia physalis washed up on shore of Shackleford Banks, NC
Yes, it’s a Portuguese man o’ war (Physalia physalis,) one of the few highly dangerous “jellyfish” that can be found in this area, and this one was washed up on the shore of Shackleford Banks, NC, while we were visiting there just shy of a year ago. It’s not a true jellyfish, but instead a siphonophore, a hydrozoan, or perhaps I should say they’re hydrozoans, because it’s not one organism, but four distinct organisms that live symbiotically, a floating commune. The bit that you need to be careful of, here looking like a tangle of navy blue yarn, are the tentacles or polyps, which contain the stinging nematocysts, and while I have not had the pleasure myself, by all accounts if you encounter these, you will be made well aware of it immediately (and probably loudly.) The most visible organism, looking like a sad balloon, is the bladder-sail (pneumatophore) on top, for buoyancy and indeed catching the wind to travel. The other bits are, essentially, stomachs and reproductive organisms. Now, how one of the organisms is the reproductive bit for the other three, I don’t pretend to understand, and it’s entirely possible biologists are having us on just so they can tell one another apart at parties, their nerdy idea of a secret handshake.

Portuguese man o' war Physalia physalis, backlit with flashlight, washed up on shore of Shackleford Banks, NC
The day was largely overcast when we were there, so I used my pocket flashlight to provide backlighting to this specimen(s) to bring up the color better. Washed up on the shore and dying, they’re still dangerous, and you’d think that they wouldn’t be hard to spot when you see closeups like this, but among the typical flotsam (or is it jetsam?) on a barrier island like this, they can about disappear to the unwary. And no, if you happen to be stung, even by a jellyfish, don’t urinate on it – that’s another bit of nonsense internet lore.

As for the one in Florida that I so bravely captured, it was another washup, but an extremely tiny one, small enough that I could shovel it into a film can (ask your grandfather what that is) with a bit of debris, to photograph it in a macro aquarium back home. Yes, I did take care to ensure that no tentacles or parts thereof were hanging outside of the can before I closed it and stuck it in my pocket. The resulting images… well, they looked like this:

tiny, dying Portuguese man o' war Physalia physalis photographed in macro aquarium, with and without backlighting
… were nothing great, making it clear that the specimen was on its way out and not showing much of the distinctive colors that they’re known for. While I kept a saltwater aquarium at the time, I did not introduce this one into it at all, not just from the danger to the other inhabitants (which were mostly crabs and shrimp anyway,) but because it was simply going to rot in there. Plus I had to reach in there routinely, and who wants to explain that one to the emergency room physicians?

Enjoy the holidays, everyone!

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