Late Nights and Early Mornings

 

If you enjoy astronomy then you are always on the look out for clear night skies. We haven't had that many this summer so when we get a few like we did this past week you stay up late trying to get a few good photographs of things in the night sky. I got a Dwarf 3 smart telescope last year and have been using it during clear nights to take some pictures of some of the more interesting things in the night sky. I have been really impressed on how well the Dwarf3 works and how much detail it can get from the light polluted New Jersey skies. The image at the top of this post is a mosaic of three different nights of imaging that shows the Veil Nebula. The Veil nebula is the gaseous remnants of a super nova explosion that happen some where between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago. This nebula is about 2500 light years away. 

To get this images I set up the Dwarf about an hour after sunset, on my back patio, and then program it to follow a specific target in the sky for a certain about of time. It then takes a long exposure picture of 60 seconds and keeps stacking them to create the image. Stacking each picture helps bring out more detail and improves the signal to noise ratio. I can monitor the progress on my phone while I sit inside. I usually end up trying to image a target for around 2 hours if I can. The house and the woods behind the house limit what I can see so I have to pick a target that is high in the sky and something that won't move behind the house or trees for 2 hours. 

The fact that I can get an image like this of something so far away and dim with just a few hours of imaging is a testament how far the technology has come for smart telescopes. Five or six years ago you would have had to spend at around $10,000 on a telescope, electronics and sensor to get similar results. And it would have taken a lot more time both imaging and processing the data. Now in an hour or two you can get a very good image of any Messier Object you want like this image of M27 the Dumbbell Nebula

 

This nebula shows what our solar system will look like in 5-8 billion years when the hydrogen is exhausted from our sun and it blows off it outer layer (and kills off all life as we know it). The diameter of this nebula is 2 light years so that gives you some scale to how violent the explosion was.

These are interesting and decent pictures but don't rival the Hubble telescope or more dedicated astrophotographers who get a lot more detail that I can. However what I enjoy as much as taking the picture is gaining insight and knowledge about the object in our universe. It's interesting how many strange phenomena are happening in our night sky.

Of course some of the things happening in the sky are man made. After staying up a few hours late taking pictures with my Dwarf, I got up early the next morning to see a rocket launch.

 

SpaceX is in the process of launching a series of Starlink satellites. Sometimes the launch trajectories take them up the east coast and if those launches are in the early morning they can be easily seen. So I got up this past Tuesday morning at 5am to see if I could get a picture of the rocket as it went by. When I got up I checked the Space Launch Schedule site to make sure the launch was still on. I then headed to the park near my house that had a good view of the south eastern sky. The rocket launched at 5:33am in Florida and I saw it fly by just before 5:40am. It took about 5 mins to cross the sky. I did not know how big or bright it would be so I kept scanning the sky. When it came by it was much bigger and brighter than I expected. Since the rocket was high in the atmosphere it was backlit by the sun while I was still in darkness so looked like a steam train going across the sky. They call this the jellyfish effect for the pattern it makes. It was definitely worth getting up early to see so I will have to keep and eye on the launch schedule to see when the next time this will happen.

Later that same day even though I was a little sleep deprived I decided to go down to the Edwin Forsythe wildlife refuse to try and get pictures of some birds. The refuse is a very scenic place especially early morning or late in the day

 

This is a good time of year to go as the place is filled with all kinds of different birds especially egrets and herrings. I spent a good about of time trying to get pictures of the terns grabbing fish and managed to get this picture of one with a fish in its mouth

However the best picture I got was this one. 

Until I studied this picture and did some research I didn't realize that terns shake like a dog sometimes after they dive into the water. I got this one mid shake. If you click on the picture you can see the water droplets flying off the bird. My brain had a hard time making sense of this picture when I first saw it. This is another example that sometimes the knowledge learned from taking the picture is as interesting as the picture itself. 

 

It's a Tom Ride

As I said a few post ago I have had a few new people on my rides who let's just say weren't used to my style of leading. A couple weeks ago we had to go through a little dirt and some one complained that the dirt clogged up their cleats. The response from one of the members of my insane posse was that it was a Tom ride and dirt and detours should be expected. I will admit that do things a little differently than other leaders. For each ride I try to have one interesting thing to see and try to have fun during the ride. I am a bit adventurous so when there is a bridge out I will investigate it to see if it is possible to get around it. I won't do anything unsafe but I may push the boundaries a little. We have had to walk through water a couple of times and climb over a few barriers but most of the time there is an easy way to get around most detours with out doing anything to hard or dangerous.

I also don't mine a short dirt road every now and then. Sometimes its better than going on a busy road or taking a long detour. My posse is use to and accepts this and even misses it when it doesn't happen. The truth is I always try to do something a little unexpected with a ride if I can. 

For example for my Robling ride besides doing the trail through Robling we went down to visit the eagle statue by the Burlington Bristol bridge. There is really no good reason to ride into the middle of Burlington to just see the eagle statue but it just something stupid and fun to do as part of the ride. 

 

 

This pass week I lead a ride out of Mercer County Park. It was a simple route down to Cream Ridge and back. We did run into a couple of detours and a closed road but we went through the barrier and couldn't understand why the road was closed.  On the way back to Mercer park I took a detour on the way back just to go down Line Rd. Line Rd is a road through a swamp that was closed to traffic for some reason but is still rideable on a bike. It was over grown a couple of years ago but it was cut back last year so it is still passable. Few people know our use this road anymore. I learned about it from Norm years ago and try to take it once a year or so. It's just something different and stupid to do that puts a little fun into my rides.

The August 12 Solar Eclipse

In case you were unaware there was a solar eclipse today. The total eclipse could be seen in Greenland, Iceland, Spain. Here in NJ it was only a partial eclipse. The eclipse only covered around 10% of the sun so not real interesting but we had sunny skies and it was easy enough to put the solar filter on the camera and get a pic. The next total solar eclipse visible from the US won't happen until 2044 so until then we will have to be satisfied with these partial eclipses or do some traveling

Dragonflies and Hummingbirds

 

Retirement has given me more free time. I have used this to do more riding. Relax a little more and do more hiking. NJ has an amazing amount of interesting places to hike. One of the first thing I did when I retired was make a list of places I wanted to hike. A couple of weeks ago I checked off Ramapo State Park and Double Trouble State Park but I have a lot more to visit. 

This past Monday Laura had suggested doing a hike at Abbots Marshlands. It wasn't  on my list of places to hike but it looked interesting so I decided to do it. Abbots Marshland is on the Delaware river in Bordentown. As its name suggest it is a marshland along the river. There are a number of trails in and around the marshland. 

As we walked around we stopped for pictures of the water and plants around the marsh. Besides the usual spiders Laura was looking to get pictures of dragonflies. I was skeptical that we could get a picture of a dragonfly.  Dragonflies are hard to photograph as they usually don't sit still long enough for you to get a picture of them. We got a few pictures of them on the ground that weren't that good. Luckily we found one perched on the top of weed that stayed there for a few minutes as we took pictures. 

According to Laura this is a Blue Dasher dragonfly. All I know is that close up a dragonfly is very alien looking. I'm really happy with the pictures that I got. They show a lot of detail especially in the face and wings. Click on the picture if you want a closer look. I took this picture with my regular 18mm-150mm zoom lens which is not really meant for close up pictures so I might rent a macro lens to see if I can do even better. 

Besides dragonflies we took a few scenic pictures of the rivers and lakes.

 

We ended up doing a 3.5 mile hike. Although this place wasn't on my hiking list I will probably come back again some other time as it was an interesting and scenic place for a easy hike.

 

I don't always have to go hiking to take pictures of wildlife sometimes they come to me. My wife has a lot of flowers on our back patio which does attract some hummingbirds. The problem is they fly around really fast and you never know when they are going to show up. I decided to spend a half hour quietly sitting on my patio toward the end of the day when hummingbirds sometimes show up and I got lucky.

 

The key to getting a good shot of a hummingbird is to make sure you have a high shutter speed so you can freeze the motion. You also need to shoot in rapid fire mode, taking as many pictures per second as you camera can handle so you can get lucky and capture them in a good pose. 

I probably took a least 100 shots to get these two pictures. There is a lot luck involved in getting a shot of a hummingbird and it does take some practice. These shot are okay but with a little more practice and luck I should be able to do better. I do enjoy these hikes and photography challenges and am happy I have more time to do these things now that I'm retired. 

Rerounting...

When I lead a bike ride I usually have a planned route that I follow. I may make an occasional detour but I prefer to know where I'm going and what I will encounter. Last Saturday I got a suggestion for a route which was just a list of roads. I wanted to do something easy and short after doing a lot hiking and biking during the week. Laura did have a ride to Clinton but I didn't think I wanted to do that hilly or long of a ride.

Once I put together the route from the list of roads it was a little hillier and longer than I wanted but still easier than the Clinton ride. The route started from the Yardley park and ride and went up the NJ side of the Delaware and headed over a few hills to get to Lambertville then it was back through Pennington. It was just over 2000 ft of climbing and 45 miles. 

I felt good as we started out and we slowly made our way up to the hills on the NJ side. My original route had us going up Pleasant Valley Rd but it was suggested that we make a detour to Woosamonsa and Harbourton Rd to not have to do as much climbing. We made the suggested detour but although the hills were probably a little easier the amount of climbing was actually more and we added at least a mile to the ride. We stopped in Lambertville for our break after going over Goat Hill. On our way out of Lamberville we set a picture to Laura just to annoy her. 

 We made a few more detours on our way back to Yardley. I'm not as familiar with these roads as other areas so I went along with the detours and discovered a few new roads. However this added a couple more miles and more climbing to the ride. In the end we had 2500 ft of climbing and 48 miles which wasn't much less then the Clinton ride. It was an interesting ride but I was tired at the end and it was not the ride I was expecting. Let's just say I will not be as willing to follow suggested routes and detours from this person anymore. 

That is why this Saturday I listed a flat ride out of Allentown on a well worn route. It was a 50 mile ride down to Emery's and relatively flat. It ended up being a popular ride because I had a full ride before Friday. The day ended up being a little more hot and humid than I expected but we made good progress down to Emery's and everybody was well behaved. We did go down a closed road and went over a bridge under construction. I had a few riders on this ride who haven't ridden with me before but knew about my history of going over bridges that were out and were happy that got to experience it. It's nice to know that I didn't disappoint. 

The way back to the start had a few hills along the way but nothing like last week. Still because of the heat I faded a little at the end. We did have one flat tire on the ride but it was right at the end a large metal staple went through his tire. The staple was so big and embedded in the tire that there was no easy way to get it out. Somebody had to go and get him and he will definitely need a new tire.

Although I like exploring and finding new roads sometimes it fun to just to do a well know ride. 

Hiking and Biking

After the smoke cleared last week we have a few clear low humidity days. These were top 10 days so you had to get outside and enjoy the weather. This past Monday I join a friend of mine in the community and drove up to Ramapo State Park. We did a 9 mile hike along the mountains around the park. It was a beautiful day with clear skies. The trail was rocky so it was slow going but the views of the mountains and Wanaque reservoir were amazing.

There were also the ruins of the  Van Slyke Castle to walk through.

We ate lunch by Ramapo lake.

Then we hike back up to the start. Ramapo State park had been on my list to hike for a while so I'm glad I finally made it there. 

Thursday was another perfect day so I sent out an email to do a Pete ride out of Pennington. Pete usually leads these type of rides but he was away for this month so I thought I would lead one of his type of rides. It turned out that Pete was actually in town for a few days so he joined us for the ride. It was a typical circuitous route around Pennington. There were some rolling hills but no real climbing. These type of routes have a lot of turns and go through a lot of neighbor streets. It was a pleasant no hassle ride and a good way to enjoy the nice weather.

I usually relax on Friday's so I'm in shape for Saturday's ride but with another perfect weather day I decided to check out Double Trouble state park. This is the site of former cranberry farm so there are streams, lakes and bogs to walk around.

It was a calm day so I got some cool reflections off the lakes.  

I used the reflection to get an impossible looking picture off one of the lakes. 

Why is the water above the trees?

Besides the trails around the lakes and streams. There is also the old village itself to explore.

 

It has some old equipment lying around.

I love the rusted patina on the equipment.   

 

I ended up with about 3 miles of hiking. There is a lot more to explore here so I will be back to keep exploring when the weather allows. 

It was a very active week but when you have weather this good you need to take advantage of it.  

 

 

Sheltering in Place

The Canadian wildfire smoke descended on us again this year. The hot and dry conditions of June caused some massive fires up in Ontario and toward the end of the week the air quality went from okay to unhealthy as the winds blew the smoke this way. Now that I don't have to work I've been trying to get out a couple times during the week and at least once on the weekend. This past Saturday we had a good ride to the Blawenburg Bistro and Tuesday I road back from the shore. I was planning on going out again this week but when I went to airnow.gov I saw the air quality was well into the unhealthy range. Of course I did really need to see the news reports or particle counts in the air to know it was not healthy to go out as it smelled like smoke outside. The look of the air was also weird as it wasn't the normal hazy that is caused by fog or clouds. 

The picture above is a couple hours before sunset. The only way you can a clear picture of the suns disk without it being sunrise or sunset is by using a solar filter which blocks out 99.999% of the suns light. The fact that I could get this picture without a filter shows you how much smoke and dust is in the air blocking the suns light. 

This meant there was no outdoor activity for me for the last few days of the week. Spending any extended time outdoors would not be good for your health as the particles in the air are so small and numerous that they can bypass a lot of the standard body defenses and get into your lungs and bloodstream. 

The predictions of air quality and smoke cover are even worst than normal weather forecasting so my hope for a ride on Saturday was crushed when I saw the air quality when I got up in the morning. I'm hoping to get out on Sunday and hope the wind direction changes for the rest of the week so I can spend more time outside.