2 October 24
1 October 24
30 September 24
Birdtober 2024: Deep Dive into Anna's Hummingbirds from Life
In previous years I have enjoyed doing the official #birdtober series in the past where you follow a given bird on a given day. This is almost always a bird that hails from far away and I’ve needed to work from photos, which is okay but was getting me a bit frustrated. There is nothing wrong about working from photos: you do learn plenty. But this year I’ve decided to go ahead and work only from life, making nature journaling-type notes on each day’s work, focusing on this or that feature of a bird I see every day.
Hoping to learn a lot and enjoy myself.
15 June 24
1 June 24
30 May 24
29 May 24
27 May 24
Back to the Stars
A couple weeks ago, on 10 May 2024, we in Northern California were treated to an almost unheard of sight at our latitude, an aurora. That evening there was a lot of chatter about it happening, but I had no idea if I’d be able to see anything from our backyard in the center of town. Once it got dark, I went outside but couldn’t tell if the pink in the sky I was seeing was from city glow or from an aurora. But maybe my camera would help me see something my eye couldn’t. So I got my camera from inside and shot some stills and video through an ultrawide lens. Success! The photo above is an eight second time exposure, and I could see motion on the video (taken with half-second exposures).
This encounter has gotten me excited about astronomy again, and in particular electronically-assisted astronomy (often abbreviated EAA). Cameras have the ability to see much fainter objects than the human eye can detect, especially through taking long time exposures. I have almost all the right equipment to dive into EAA, the one exception is that my equatorial mount, which is needed to get those long time exposures, is currently broken. I am hoping to get it repaired soon.
Meanwhile, we are being alerted to look out for the once-in-a-lifetime eruption of the recurrent nova T Coronae Borealis. This may happen sometime between tomorrow and the next couple of years, but most likely in the next several months.It is currently 10th magnitude, but the last time it erupted in 1946 it got up to 2nd magnitude in brightness.
