Sunday, July 13, 2008

The brains of the outfit


Terry looks at the moon
Originally uploaded by chaimann
This is Terry, making the previous photo possible. As I told someone last night, he's Data, I'm Lore. He spent several minutes fussing with the equipment and swapping out eyepieces. I said, "Ooh, shiny!" and started snapping pictures.

Shoot the moon


Moon1
Originally uploaded by chaimann
Terry pointed his telescope at the moon last night while waiting for it to get dark. I sneaked up and stuck my camera up to the eyepiece. Pretty nice for a first attempt, huh?

Last night at Ashton

After being cloudy all day, it cleared off in the late afternoon, so Terry packed up the telescope and we headed off to Ashton Observatory.

At dusk, we saw some deer feeding at the edge of the woods near the observatory. I got as close as I dared without spooking them, but it was just dim enough that I couldn't get a clear photo. I decided to let the motion work FOR me, and switched over to video.



The auto exposure flopped the colors around randomly, but darn it, those are fawns, and they are eating, and they didn't really care that I was watching.

It stayed clear and was long-sleeve cool by the time the sun went down. The moon and the humidity kept Terry from doing any serious observing. Even though it was not an "official" public night, a few campers came over to through the telescopes. One couple had binoculars and had figured out that you could point them at the sky. Terry spent quite a bit of time showing them things, and I gave them some tips on bino and naked eye observing. That's me - the evangelist for cheap observing.

Saturday, July 05, 2008

Geese and goslings

The last of the vacation videos from Blackhawk Lake. Sorry for the noise. It was windy.

I could watch geese babies all day long.

How to hypnotize a kitty

Starring Katie!

Friday, July 04, 2008

Vacation photos, at last


100_1400
Originally uploaded by chaimann
Since it is a long weekend, I'm trying to get some backlog caught up - such as putting some of last month's vacation photos on Flickr.

We went to Blackhawk Lake, a couple of hours from here in Lakeview, Iowa. We had rain and thunderstorms almost every day, but at least that kept the temperatures pleasant. The campground was almost empty - only three or four units in the whole place - so it was as close as we could get to being all alone (but still with flush toilets and hot showers.)

Pelicans

When we went on vacation last month, there were pelicans hanging out near our campground at Blackhawk Lake. At about :10, a cormorant pops up and mills around for a few seconds, and then dives back under water.

Cat alert for Minnie: There are bird noises.