Jupiter

Jupiter has been "at opposition", high in the night sky and easy to see. Took a shot with the 300 mm lens, can see 3 of its moons. Gotta gotta gotta get me a telescope, just can't decide what to get.

View of the night sky from my backyard, October 28, 2011, 4:50 a.m., 10-20mm lens at 10mm, f4.5, ISO 800 for 30 seconds.

Glow-in-the-Dark Firewood

There was a thunderstorm rolling in at about 2:00 a.m. this morning that woke me up, so I grabbed the camera and set it up hoping to get some shots of lightning. No dice, the lightning was up in the clouds lighting up the sky but no clear bolts. I stoked up the woodstove and sat on the couch for a while, and when my eyes adjusted I noticed a strange green glow by the firewood box. I wondered what the heck that was, as there were no electronics there with little lights that would cause the glow. I turned the light on and saw some pieces of firewood I had set beside the box. I turned the light off and let my eyes adjust, saw the green glow. Turned the light on and took the topmost piece and set it on the table and turned the light off. The piece of firewood was glowing. I set up the camera and took some long exposures of the glow. It is the bottom butt piece from a small dead tree that I had cut yesterday, the bottom end glows but not the top end. Must be some kind of fungus in the decaying wood, I'll have to investigate this further. The gnarly root piece is still (I think) out beside the firewood pile, I'll have to see if I can find it. It's too bad I don't know where I had collected this particular supply of wood, yesterday I had taken my little 16" chainsaw and went out the laneway, stopping in several places to collect small dead trees for firewood for our woodstove, things that had fallen over, "easy stuff" that I can gather on my own. This particular piece is 5 1/2 inches wide at its widest. I'll have to do some investigating on causes of phosphorescence in decaying wood.

Excuse me, WHAT kind of potatoes???

Sometimes when you read some pretentious nonsense on the side of a package your really have to laugh out loud. This time it was on the side of a small bag of potato chips. I LOVE potato chips. Bought a small bag because I will sit and munch non-stop on the largest family size bag of potato chips you can buy. An open bag is an empty bag. Anyway, I digress... Having enjoyed my small bag of ketchup potato chips I got to wondering what kind of spices they use to get the ketchup flavour, so started reading the list of ingredients. Now, the main ingredients are always listed first, and you can usually assume that the main ingredients in a bag of potato chips are: (insert *drum roll* ) potatoes. In THIS bag, however, we didn't have just any old potatoes. Noooo...these were "specially selected" potatoes. Not red potatoes, not Irish white potatoes, not PEI potatoes, not sweet potatoes, not yellow potatoes.... "specially selected" potatoes. I'm picturing some bespeckled guy in a white lab coat and boots, clipboard in hand, pen clutched firmly in other hand, as he steps between the furrows of a freshly plowed field specially selecting the potatoes. Just warms the cockles of my heart, and the digestion of my belly, to know that I have just eaten specially selected potatoes.

More Orion

This is how this dog sleeps. Honestly. Sometimes she rolls up against me on the bed, I wake up, all I see is feet in the air. Finally managed to grab the camera in time to catch her in the act.









I think it's obvious that Orion is my favourite constellation. While the rest of world, my dog included, were sleeping, I got up just after moonset this morning and got out the camera and tracker, knowing that this would be the last chance to photograph stars in a dark moonless sky for a while. This was the night of the Droconid meteor shower, but with the nearly full moon and the shower peaking on the other side of planet, no Draconids were seen. (I was out a couple times just after dark to check.) There is, however, a minor meteor shower, the Arietids, originating from Aries/Taurus, and I did see a few that were probably those. Lovely to the eye, too dim to show up in the photographs, in spite of high IS0 and wide apertures.



At least it was a mild night, we've been enjoying sunny warm weather this past week. There were a couple of firefly larvae lighting up lime green in the grass near my feet.


I had forgotton to put the slip of paper in my pocket that listed the time the ISS was coming over, and of course had the camera pointed in the other direction. Fortunately I looked around in time to see it coming, so didn't miss it entirely.

*sigh* The full moon is coming around, and by Wednesday we're supposed to get another rainy spell for a few days. Hopefully there will be some breaks in the clouds during the night, lovely to see the moon shining through, lighting up the clouds and reflecting in the water.

Kerrie the Merry Pup stuck her nose in my face at about 3:30 a.m., and insisted on going out. So...on with the pants, shirt, boots, coat and out we went. When my blurry eyes cleared a bit I realized that it was clear skies, moon had set, and the temperatures weren't that cold, so I got the tracker and camera bag and headed down to lake to try for some shots. Conditions were good but photography was total frustration. Could not for the life of me figure out Polaris, so couldn't set the tracker. While I was wandering along the lake shore looking for it I set the camera for a few minutes, thought I may as well get a star trails shot. Took a few 30 second shots, I'm *sure* I had set the camera for 1600 IS0 but found out later that it was set for 400 IS0, not good.

I then headed over to the dock to see what the viewing was like there. Still couldn't figure out which star was Polaris, with the field of stars turned many degrees at that time in the morning (now 4:26 a.m.) it was confusing, not a view I'm used to. It finally occurred to me to set for a star trail shot for about 3 minutes and then check the viewfinder in the camera, the one in the middle's gotta be Polaris. So, having done that, could finally set the tracker. At the far end of the dock Orion can be seen *just* above the trees at "the point". I love trees, but being down in the valley with trees on a hill, ain't good for astronomy.

Another source of frustration is the Manfrotto ballhead. It's a squat shape, the release knob is large, doesn't allow the camera to settle into the angle that I want for some shots. Again, I had set the camera for some 30 second shots at IS0 1600, was *sure* I had set the IS0, but they were on 400 IS0 where I had it set for the tracker shots.

At least the dew held off, I could see a bit of steam rising off the lake in the flashlight beam while setting up, that's usually an indication that you don't have much time before the lens fogs up.

Finally gave up around 4:45 a.m. and went back to bed.