The summer rainy season — known as the North American Monsoon — has begun across Arizona. Over the past week thunderstorm activity has increased substantially. Some locations have already received their average July rainfall in only a few days while other locations have had only a trace of rain. Flagstaff has been one of the wet places and has had a tremendous amount of rain, large hail, and lightning and there have been some good opportunities to catch lightning with a camera.
Cloud-to-ground lightning with the San Francisco Peaks in the distance.Lightning strikes behind the San Francisco Peaks.
The second image is a composite of two separate photographs taken a few minutes apart with slightly different lighting and cloud structure.
Earlier this year we had a chance to share a day of mountain biking with a visitor from southwest Colorado. She told us about the great mountain biking trails in Cortez, Colorado, and we knew we would have to visit this place.
As spring rolled around and the snow retreated we found ourselves in Cortez and riding the well-designed “Phil’s World” system of trails. These trails were designed for mountain bikers and flow with the contours of the land. While the terrain is truly hilly, there are few tough hills to climb. An interesting aspect of these trails is the one-way flow of traffic. This allows the trails to remain narrow since all traffic flows in the same direction and groups do not pass by each other — although faster groups will pass slower groups in the same direction.
Since we started our riding day early we were able to ride the trails with few other riders out and about. This gave us a feeling of isolation instead of the normal congestion of many popular trail systems.
Coco Race, Phil’s World.Stinky Spring Loop, Phil’s World.
Our favorite section? Rib Cage! Described as “…a highlight of the system for its whoops and spines and a thrilling series of jumps, banked turns and steep drops. It’s an exercise of inertia and physics performed on a bicycle…”
Congratulations and Thank-You to all those who helped to conceive, develop, and maintain these trails.
Comet PanSTARRS continues to amaze sky watchers! Even though it has significantly diminished in brightness as it moves away it is still easily photographed. Even more amazing is the incredible “anti-tail” that has developed. Astronomy Photo of the Day (APOD) has a nice image of the anti-tail of Comet PanSTARRS. APOD notes that “…PanSTARRS anti-tail is one of the longest since the appearance of Comet Arend-Roland in 1957.”
Comet PanSTARRS: 30 May 2013.
This image was taken using a fixed tripod along with a moderate and fast telephoto lens (Nikon AF-S 85mm f/1.8G). Thirty separate images of 15s duration were stacked using the free Deep Sky Stacker software. This relatively-long exposure with a telephoto lens was only possible because the comet is located so close to Polaris (North Star) resulting in minimal star motion. This shows that high-end astronomy equipment (i.e. equatorial tracking mount, telescope, modified cameras, etc.) is not necessary to take photographs of the comet.
During the latter half of the month of May the planets Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury have been drawing closer together. Their closest approach was on 26 May 2013 when the three planets could fit within a 3° circle. For comparison, the disk of the Moon and Sun are about ½ degree.
Triple planetary alignment of Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury in May 2013.
For several nights leading up to the closest approach and for a few nights afterward I shot photos of the three planets during the evening hours. I then took the best image from each day (i.e., cloud free!) and made a composite image. Next, I shifted each image up/down, left/right until the planet Jupiter lined up. The result was that the composite contains a single image of Jupiter along with five images of Venus and Mercury. This makes it easy to see how all three planets were shifting relative to each other over the course of five days. During this period, Venus and Mercury were quickly rising higher in the sky while Jupiter was slowly moving towards the horizon.
This will probably be the final entry for Comet C/2011 L4 PanSTARRS. The comet is heading farther away from Earth each day and its brightness has diminished substantially. I have still been able to photograph it using long exposures or by stacking* many shorter exposures.
Comet PanSTARRS
Here is an image from a few days ago that clearly shows the fan-shaped tail of the comet.
Comet PanSTARRS and M31.
From a month ago — this stacked image shows both the comet and M31 (Andromeda Galaxy).
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* I’ve been experimenting with the free Deep Sky Tracker for image stacking.
