Another Try With Monarchs

Last year about this time, Danielle tried raising a monarch caterpillar. Unfortunately, the butterfly appears to have succumb to a protozoan infection and did not survive. Over the weekend, we found eight monarch caterpillars on our tropical milkweed. As there were only three remaining last night, we decided to bring them inside and try again at being butterfly parents. We set up some branches of milkweed in some water within the same small terrarium.

October 27 - Here is the largest of the three. One small one has already turned into a chrysalis even though it was half the size of this one.

October 30 - All three rescued caterpillars have now pupated and are attached to the grille cover of the terrarium. The one on the left pupated first, the one on the right last night.

November 5 - The Queen caterpillar we intoduced as a small second instar has developed.

November 8 - Today, the first Monarch emerged from its chrysalis. We missed the event, coming back to the cage to see a fully emerged butterfly late morning. We left it for a couple of hours to inflate its wings before transferring it outside early afternoon.

Late in the day, the Queen caterpillar turned into a chrysalis. A few hours in, the chrysalis still has the segments of the original caterpillar.

November 9 - Today was the emergence of the second Monarch. We captured the event in a time-lapse movie. Frames are 30sec apart spanning about two hours from 3:15pm to 5:15pm. We are leaving the butterfly in the cage until the morning.

November 10 - Released the second Monarch this morning.

November 11 - The last Monarch emerged this morning. We set up our small VGA nest-camera in the terrarium. The color contrast is poor.

November 12 - The next morning, we released this final Monarch. It was gone by evening when I got home.

Triple Conjunction

October 20 - I dragged myself out of bed before 6:00 this morning to have a look at the triple conjunction ... yeah, that's pretty early for me. Weather forecast has the rest of the week cloudy including when the conjunction is probably at its best on Thursday or Friday.

I got this image while the sky was still pretty dark at 06:44. I zoomed in on the three planets and placed the backyard tree-tops in the frame for reference. By stopping down the lens by 1/3 stop, I removed the wonky looking diffraction effects that were especially noticeable on Venus and obtained the more pleasant diffraction spikes from the iris shown here.

Double checking in my SkyTools atlas, I confirmed that at the top of the frame is the brightest object, quarter phase Venus, shining at magnitude -4.4. The next brightest object, lower in the sky, is Jupiter shining at magnitude -1.8 with moons Ganymede above and Europa below. Further down and to the left is the much fainter Mars shining at only magnitude +1.7.  The rest of the stars are from an unexceptional part of Leo, the brightest of which is Chi Leo just to the left of Jupiter at magnitude +4.6.

Canon 7DII, EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L II -  100mm, f/5, 2s, ISO-3200

As dawn was breaking, Danielle called me back outside to show me that Mercury was now also visible. This second image was taken at 07:15 with a wider field of view and a much shorter exposure. It shows the same conjunction pattern at the top of the frame now joined by Mercury just rising before the sun. At magnitude -0.8, it is actually almost 10 times brighter than Mars. I had to brighten all four planets in post-processing as they were nearly completely washed out by the brightening sky.

Canon 7DII, EFS 18-55mm -  35mm, f/5, 1/40s, ISO-800

October 27 - After a weekend of torrential rain, a bit of a break in the clouds this morning allowed me to get another shot of the conjunction. In seven days, the planets had moved into a different configuration as shown in this 06:00 image. The full moon was to my back, illuminating both the clouds and the foliage.

In the picture, Jupiter is now the upper most planet shining at magnitude -1.4.  It has moved further east (down towards the eastern horizon) in the sky. This is normal "prograde" motion of the planet against the background of stars due to the planet's proper orbital motion. Note that Chi-Leo, the brightest star above and slightly to the left of Jupiter, marks where the planet was last week. By coincidence, Ganymede is once again above and Europa below Jupiter, both having made one full orbit of the planet in a week's time. Venus, at magnitude -4.3, is now further east than Jupiter, having moved considerably further in the sky than Jupiter. Near the center of the frame, Mars, shining red at magnitude +1.9 has also moved further east. For reference, the brightest star up and slightly to the left of Mars is magnitude +4.0 Sigma-Leo.

Canon 7DII, EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L II -  100mm, f/5, 2s, ISO-1600

Five minutes later, the clouds rolled back in again. As they did so, the effect looked like van Gogh's Starry Night.

October 29 - Two more days have not resulted a significant change in configuration. This 05:20 image again shows that Venus is progressing most quickly through the sky, having almost caught up with the position that Mars held two days ago. Jupiter itself has not moved noticeably but the moons have progressed in their orbits. Europa is now uppermost with Io just below. Callisto is visible below but Ganymede is now too close to the planet's glare to be seen in this image.

Canon 7DII, EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L II -  100mm, f/5, 2s, ISO-1600

Another Brown Booby at Windy Point

Another Brown Booby has made an appearance at Bob Wentz Windy Point Park in Lake Travis. This time a juvenile. This pelagic bird is rarely seen on shore, never mind in central Texas. Again, the bird was far away, this time about 1/2 mile towards Mansfield Dam. It never moved off of the buoy in the 90 minutes we watched it.

Images taken with Canon 7DII and EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 II with Extender 1.4x III.  Nominal settings: 560mm, f/10, 1/500s, ISO-800.

Monarchs at South Llano

This evening, after a frustrating afternoon trying to see turkeys, Danielle found a roost of Monarch Butterflies in a grove Frost Weed near the entrance parking lot at South Llano State Park. In total, there were probably 20 butterflies. Some were feeding on the Frost Weed (first picture). Others had already settled down for the night in the trees above (second picture).  We were able to spend a half hour observing and photographing them.

The next morning, Danielle reported the observation in a log book at the park headquarters. She later received a thank you from a park volunteer who said that she had been able to lead nature tours later that day and had observed about 100 butterflies.

Canon 7DII, EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L II, 463mm, f/10, 1/250s, ISO-800, Flash

Canon 7DII, EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L II, 463mm, f/10, 1/250s, ISO-400, Flash

Birding at South Llano River

Below is a slide show of from our quick weekend trip to the South Llano River State Park. This park has some nice bird blinds and we were looking forward to what transient species we might see. We were not able to get a reservation in the park itself so stayed at another RV park on the north end of Junction. One of my photography goals was to get a better picture of a Black-throated Sparrow. This was a success. Another was to see the Wild Turkeys more closely. This was not a success.

This image of a White-crowned Sparrow was one of my favorites. Taken only a dozen feet away, it captures great feather detail.

The slide-show below highlights other species we saw.

Watch 'em Burn

At lunch today, I opened this fortune cookie. I am guessing that there was something lost in the translation. They could have chosen "glow" or "shine" or any other incandescent word. But, no, they had to pick "burn" On the other hand, it might be referring to an initiative-crushing work environment, or perhaps a coven of witches ... who knows.

Lunar Eclipse Trip to Inks Lake

Last night was the "Supermoon Lunar Eclipse," and eclipse that got alot more media attention that previous eclipses in this tetrad. I had great plans for imaging the eclipse, improving on my previous effort. I especially wanted to set up a tracking mount to get better star fields.

The weather, however, had other plans for me. Given the cloudy forecast and the fact that it was a "work night," I decided to scale back the effort. The cloud cover was terrible all day Sunday. Checking the "Clear Sky Clock" web site, showed that the cloud cover would be better to the west. I packed the camera and a tripod and headed out to Inks Lake State Park, a bit over an hour west of home. I left the fancy tracking equipment at home so that I would not have as much take down time.

At the park, I did a bit of birding at the new blind. Not too much other than feeder birds but I did catch some shots of this Eastern Phoebe hunting from the park bench.

560mm, f/8, 1/250, ISO-1600

For the eclipse, I moved up the road to the scenic overlook. The cloud cover along the eastern horizon was heavy but I had high hopes that things would clear up soon.

560mm, f/8, 1/10, ISO-1600

The moon made a quick appearance in a sucker hole soon after the moon entered the penumbra - not enough to be evident in this picture. It then quickly vanished back into the clouds giving occasional hazy views. I could tell that the eclipse was happening due to the progressive dimming of the moonlight behind the clouds. I could also tell that the last part of the moon to enter the umbra was the two or three o'clock position.

560mm, f/8, 1/50, ISO-200

Soon after 9pm, the disk started to be more apparent. Over the course of the next hour and a half, the brightest edge of the lunar disk rotated from the two o'clock position to the seven o'clock position. The sky cleared up during that period with occasional haze passing across the moon, dimming it. This image was taken during one of the brighter moments at 10:15pm. It was clear enough to image some stars in Pisces. Once again, I was struck by the impression that the moon no longer looked like a bright flat disk but rather a three-dimensional beach ball floating in the sky. Due to the exposure time, this image looks brighter and redder than it would appear to the naked eye.

560mm, f/8, 1", ISO-3200

Not having a tracking mount, I kept the exposure to under 1 second. With the f/8 lens combination, this required exposure at ISO-3200 resulting in a lot of post processing work to clean up the noise.

At about 10:25pm, the moon began to exit the umbra and a bright crescent began to form, swamping out the exposure of the dimmer orange disk. During the April 2014 eclipse, and the October 2014 eclipse, I had been able to see a pronounced blue tinging just before the moon began to leave the umbra due to ozone layer absorption of red light. During this eclipse, I was barely able to see the phenomenon. The brightness of the lunar disk in this image is closer to how it would appear to the naked eye.

560mm, f/8, 1/10, ISO-3200

Appropriate for the moment, but perhaps not for a campground, someone below began playing a recording of Also sprach Zarathustra as the crescent appeared. That degenerated into Pink Floyd and strobe lights ... making it just about time to pack up. On the drive home, I stopped once at  11pm to catch a shot of the moon two thirds of the way out of the umbra.

560mm, f/8, 1/500, ISO-800

My brother-in-law, Ross Cunniff, had better luck with the weather and caught some very nice shots from Colorado which he posted on his blog. He has also created an animation of the eclipse from frames taken every two minutes and added some native-american sounding moon mood music.

All images taken with Canon 7DII, EF 100-400mm II, EF Extender 1.4x III. Flash for the birds, none for the moon.

Night Heron and Berry Springs

Quick jaunt to Berry Springs park near sundown to see what birds were to be found. A few blue-gray gnatcatchers were foraging in the brush along the back side of the pecan field, near the dam. A Carolina Chickadee was pishing in the tree nearby.

I saw only a half dozen Eastern Bluebirds in the grove, far fewer than last weekend. Also found a Yellow-crowned Night Heron fishing patiently in the catch basin in the middle of the pecan grove.

All images taken with Canon 7DII, EF 100-400mm II, and Extender 1.4x III. All images used flash.

Test of Canon Extender

Trying the Canon Extender EF 1.4x III today on the EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 IS II USM and Canon 7DII.  My earlier tests with the Kenko 1.4 and the Mark-I version of the lens showed that I was better off never using the extender.  My test with the Canon extender is much more promising.

In the following test, I set the camera up on a tripod, used mirror lock-up, and fired with a cable release. I used AF to focus on the bark of a tree. Camera was set to ISO-100 and all shots taken at the "tele" end of the lens where I normally shoot. I shot one raw frame fully open and one frame stopped down by -1.0.

I imported the images into Photoshop with default corrections. sharpening 50%, radius 1.0, no smoothing. On the images taken with the extender, I cropped to a 2:3 region at the center of the frame with width 1400. On the images taken without the extender, I repeated the cropping with a width of 1000. I then stretched these two frames to a width of 1400. All four frames were saved in highest resolution JPG.

Canon EF 100-400mm II - 400mm, f/5.6, ISO-100

Canon EF 100-400mm II - 400mm, f/8, ISO-100

Canon EF 100-400mm II with Extender 1.4x III - 560mm, f/8, ISO-100

Canon EF 100-400mm II with Extender 1.4x III - 560mm, f/11, ISO-100

All four images except the last are virtually identical. The improvement in the last image maybe due either to the additional reduction in aperture or simply due to a moment of better seeing. I did not due further comparisons.  All of these tests are center-of-frame. I did not carefully test the peripheral image quality as my subjects are rarely framed there. However, my cursory inspection of the full frames did not show any significant differences either. I am initially satisfied that the addition of the Canon extender does not adversely affect the sharpness of the images, the same conclusion that can be drawn from Canon's published MTF diagrams.

Suckers Wanted

A quick Google search on "Volkswagen" today provides many articles on the blatant cheating Volkswagen engaged in to defraud the American public into buying their so-called "clean diesel" cars. They are accused of, and have admitted to, installing sophisticated software to defeat the emissions testing process by only turning on the full emissions reduction system while under test.

We are the owners of not one, but two of the affected vehicles. A 2010 Jetta wagon and a 2012 Golf. In large part, we bought these cars because they delivered superior on-road performance and fuel economy, had an expectation of great engine longevity, and didn't compromise on emissions ... that great German engineering, you know. Too bad those brilliant engineers couldn't have spent more time making engineering breakthroughs and less time crafting sleazy computer algorithms.

We both wanted a green car and this looked like a good option based on our extensive reading. I also wanted to support the clean diesel efforts in this country. I had always wondered why Volkswagen had so little competition selling small clean diesel vehicles in this country. Now I know ... they couldn't do it either.

Though a strong government crackdown on these bastards would be gratifying, we will probably still be left holding the bag. How much will our total cost of ownership increase once the software is patched and how much will the resale value be affected? In the meantime, we have been and are still driving a dirty car, not the "clean diesel" we bought. Way to go you turkeys, here are at least two previously proud Volkswagen owners who have vowed never to buy another Volkswagen product.