I didn’t know

Al Denelsbeck

I went out yesterday morning when it was finally clear to take a shot at the Perseids meteors, as well as the aurora if it bothered to show. Same ol’ same ol’ – I saw a couple of small and brief meteors, and captured the barest streaks in images, but not at all worth the effort on either count. It did not help that the humidity was high and cutting down some of the ‘seeing’ for the evening.

But while out there, I watched a bright star rising over the lake, eventually realizing that it was a pair in close proximity, and pretty bright – they reflected well in the water while the air was still.

Mars and Jupiter in close proximity rising over Falls Lake
That’s the two of them center frame, while Pleiades is the cluster to the right (which I tended to keep in the frame, because I had it in my head this was the Pleiades storm and not the Perseids – that’s higher and to the left.) Later that day, I pulled up Stellarium to see what I’d been seeing and discovered that it was Jupiter and Mars in close conjunction – and that they would be in even closer conjunction this morning. How did I not hear about this?

But before we go, we’ll take a full resolution look at that frame.

full resolution inset of frame with Mars and Jupiter rising, and a very small meteor streak
Most of the streaks – the ones all going the same way – are simply because this was a 30-second exposure and that’s how far they move because of Earth’s rotation. But the other little streak that isn’t in sync is a meteor, one that I never saw and likely wouldn’t have even if I’d been looking right at it, since it was way too short.

So, yes, I did get out this morning and chase the pair again, this time when they were roughly a moon’s width apart in the sky (our moon, not any of the others.)

Mars and Jupiter in close conjunction, showing the four Jovian moons
That’s Mars at top, and Jupiter with (from bottom) Ganymede, Europa, Io, and Callisto attending. This is the best that I’m going to get with a 600mm lens, but at least it shows the proximity quite well.

I keep saying this and it keeps not happening (like how I said that as if it’s out of my control?) but I really need to get the telescope and tracking motor happening. About an hour from now, Io will be throwing its shadow across Jupiter’s face, right along the Great Red Spot, which would be a cool pic. But to get Jupiter big enough in the frame to see those details, it would be moving quite noticeably, and I’d have to counteract with the tracking motor to snag the exposure. One of these days…

Historical residents

Al Denelsbeck

I got these photos some time back – not quite a month ago, looking at the date stamps – and then set them aside when I was doing the image sorting some time after that, and am finally getting around to doing a post about them, now that I’ve seen no sign of either for a while, though admittedly I haven’t been looking closely. These were residents of one of the butterfly bushes (Buddleja davidii,) and might still be if I looked a lot closer, because they’re both great at remaining hidden.

crab spider Mecaphesa perched within blossoms of butterfly bush Buddleja davidii
First up we have a variety of crab spider, and from BugGuide’s indicators, one of the 18 species of Genus Mecaphesa that we have in this country, which is as close as I’m getting. To the species name, anyway – I can get closer to crab spiders, and even handle them, anytime I want – I just don’t choose to. Despite the apparently aggressive stance, this is a typical pose for them, ready to immediately snag anything (of the appropriate size) that comes within reach to partake of the flowers. When actual danger threatens, they usually tuck in closer and slide around to the underside, or deeper within the crevices among the blossoms.

If you know your butterfly bushes, you know that the blossoms are somewhere around 8-10mm across, to give you the scale. This will come in handy later on.

crab spider Mecaphesa spread atop blossoms of butterfly bush Buddleja davidii
Not long after a rain, my specimen was found perched high on the bloom spike, beseeching the heavens to stop – or to produce more rain, I’m not sure which. These are one of the species that sometimes makes itself apparent when we’ve been having hot, dry periods and I go around some of the choice plants with a misting sprayer – they’re not as exuberant about it as mantids, but they definitely come out to get some water.

crab spider Mecaphesa perched within blossoms of butterfly bush Buddleja davidii
This was the image that I used to semi-confirm the Genus; you can see that the outer front eyes (anterior lateral) are a little larger than the middle (median) two, plus the spider is hairy, which most crab spiders are not. The other four eyes are out of sight from this angle, crowning in a crescent over top of the head and visible from above. The smoothly tapering nature of the pedipalps (those two little front ‘legs’ near the face) peg this as a female, since males will have club-shaped palps. I never saw this one with any prey while I was passing, but it would be easy enough to have something smaller and I’d never notice it unless I was right on top of them.

And now the other resident, sitting only a few bloom spikes away.

jagged ambush bug Phymata hiding among butterfly bush Buddleja davidii blossoms
It’s a shame these guys are so small and hard to light, since their detail is amazing. This is a variety of jagged ambush bug (Genus Phymata,) and they also adore the butterfly bushes, but are often twice as hard to spot. Their exoskeleton always puts me in mind of the classic Samurai illustrations, and while they tend to avoid me when I lean in close, they’re pretty confident when going after prey – that’s probably where the name comes from.

head-on shot of jagged ambush bug Phymata behind blossom of butterfly bush Buddleja davidii
This is a slightly better view, but also check the blossom that it’s hiding behind – the overall length of the arthropod doesn’t exceed 10mm, and this one was slowly sidling out of view every time I tried for a better angle. The macro softbox rig is on a flex-arm and quite adjustable for light angle, but this doesn’t mean that other branches of the same bush won’t be preventing me from achieving the angle that works best, and even bumping them can cause a subject to panic and go for cover. I have a lot of shots (well, I mean, I throw them out) where another branch threw a shadow across my subject.

jagged ambush bug Phymata sheltering under blossom of butterfly bush Buddleja davidii while showing adhering raindrops
Perhaps the best lighting angle, because it shows the knobbiness of the chitin as well as some adhering raindrops, though the detail of the legs, pincers, and proboscis aren’t adequate. If you look closely, there’s a ‘smiley face’ on the foreleg that marks the serrated edges of their viselike pincers – you get a much better view here.

The flowers of butterfly bushes don’t last very long – about a week or so – and while they come into bloom at different times, it’s only about two weeks before the entire spike is dead and brown and not attracting any food for these guys. I watched the ambush bug here work its way up to hiding out among the only two faintly-living blossoms at the tip of a brown cluseter, not in a hurry to abandon the spike, and missed my opportunity for a shot then. The next day it was gone, and I have to paint this picture, since on this bush, the branches are all long and decently separated, so the ambush bug had quite a trek down the stem to another branch and back up to the end where the blossoms are – I looked, but could not find it either on a new spike or making progress to one. The crab spiders have it much easier: they can simply cast a webline in a faint breeze and take a shortcut across between blossom clusters, with the added benefit that they can see which spikes look the most promising. For the ambush bugs, they’re making the choice way down at the base of a fork, likely unable to see which branch is going to produce new blooms soon. Maybe they have some method of telling otherwise? You got me. As adults, they will have wings, but it’s also likely that at that time they’re not pursuing prey anymore, interested only in reproduction like many arthropods, and so the advantage of wings wouldn’t be for choosing a nice ambush spot.

But for these reasons, when I’m deadheading the butterfly bushes, I always drop the cut off dead blossoms into the pot at the base of the same plant, so if I do inadvertently cut a blossom where a spider or ambush bug (or anything else, really) is hiding, they’re still within reach of their chosen feeding locations.

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.

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