Happy Crane Dance

The Big Dipper at 4:50 am this morning

Jake got me up to go out and hang out with Chupacabra and La Llorona in the wee hours of the morning. I got photos of the morning stars.

The Big Dipper, Orion’s Belt and Stars! Whoopee!

Dawn

Wow! Dawn makes me jump for joy!

Those colors are worth a bow

Black Cat Break

All right! A Black Cat Break!

Jake got stuck in the mosquito netting on his way out to watch the sunset.

Poor Jake! We’re jumping for him!

Woo Hoo! Look at those beautiful cranes in flight.

The Mountains are so beautiful! Look at all those towers!

Such pretty golds and oranges at dusk!

Wired

Lonesome dove on a wire at sunrise

Betty Boop

Spunk Art Wired

Ladybug out early

Gwendolyn

Grasshopper on a wired leaf

Sasha

Happy Jake. He was wired over licking the bowls.

Happy cloud smiling at Resa’s tree

The Big Dipper

Don’t Look Linda — SsssNaKe!

Lady Banks

Linda and Herman. Don’t look at the last photo. It’s of a SsssNaKe!

Harleys in the parking lot

Lady Banks

We got out to the owls late. Walter and Willa were looking for Nora and peeping a lot.

As it got darker, Walter (on the left) started turning into a Yeti.

The Big Dip!

Moon

Sunset

• ~WARNING!~ • ~WARNING!~ • ~DANGER!~ • ~DANGER!~ • SsssNaKe Ahead!

“SssNaKe? EeeeK! Oh! Are you talking about me?

I stopped and took this large Bullsnake off the road while I was riding this afternoon.

Duck Daze Wood

Contrail Cross

Some of you might remember that three years ago to the day, I posted Wood Dack Daze with a music video. Today, I give you Wood Ducks without a music video (I feel sighs of relief).

Click on the photos to enlarge them.

Ducks at dusk

The Big Dipper are 9:30 PM and 6:00 AM

Orian and company at 9:30 PM and stars at 6:00 AM

Bridge and clouds taken on my ride this evening.

A little color at sunset

Western Skies with Neowise

Tristan texted Laurie last night that she could see Neowise in the western sky. We went out to look, but we could not see it. I got the binoculars, and Laurie finally found it. It showed up very well in the binoculars. Tristan said it was directly below the bottom star in the big dipper. The comet makes up the apex on an equilateral triangle with two stars from Ursula Major, I believe. You can read more about how to see Neowise at https://www.nasa.gov/feature/how-to-see-comet-neowise/

I dragged out a tripod, got focused on the Big Dipper, turned off autofocus, pointed my leans in the general direction of the comet, and check shots until I saw it on the screen. There were clouds in the eastern skies that were reflecting the city’s light making it so we could not see the comet with our naked eyes. After we found where the comet was, focusing on it was a real challenge. I can’t simply set the lens on infinity and shoot like I could with the old manual focus lenses. These photos give you a decent idea of what it looked like.

Quadrantids Meteor Shower Fail

HeadingOutInCold

I got out my big tripod, got all bundled up, put on my 17-40mm super-wide angle lens, snapped a self portrait, and headed out into the sub-freezing temperatures to attempt to photograph the Quadrantids Meteor Shower last night starting at 9:30 pm, thinking I could get photos in the darkness before the moon came up at 11:00 pm. But when I got outside, I discovered there was a light cloud cover reflecting a lot of light off the city from the south, southeast. I followed the suggestions about how to photograph meteor showers on Spacedex.com’s Meteor Shower Guides, but it looks like I failed to capture anything but stars, planets and clouds. After an hour making exposures from different angles, I got pretty cold and went back inside. I woke up at 2:15 am, bundled up in the dark and went out the front door and tried some exposures from the front porch. The moon, at 65% full, was up to about 10 o’clock in the southeastern sky, so I made my exposures looking west and north. I got a nice shot of the Dig Dipper in the northern skies at 2:30 am, but again failed to get anything that looked like a meteors.

LookingStraightUp945pm
Looking straight up 9:45 pm

LookingStraightUp10pm
Looking straight up at 10:00 pm.

LookingEast1015pm
Looking East at 10:15 pm

LookingSouth1030pm
Looking South at 10:30 pm.

LookingWest225am
Looking West at 2:25 am.

LookingNorth230am
Looking North 2:30 am. The big dipper is in the center.