LADEE Launch

Last night NASA launched the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) from Wallops Island, VA. It was the first launch from Wallops to leave Earth orbit. And it was close enough to home for me to watch from the back yard. 

The weather was cool and clear here, starting to feel like autumn, so my wife and I had an evening camp fire complete with S'mores. What a yummy prelude. The a little after 11:00 pm we headed out to our dock. We had done a fair bit of research to determine where we should watch it from. Thanks to some wonderful data put together by the launch team we could map the flight in Google Earth and test our view. So we went out and settled in to watch.
I had set my alarm for 2 minutes before launch. According to the launch team data, we should see the rocket on the horizon around 20 seconds after lift-off. But I suspect that we had a particularly clear view because the first thing we saw was an orangish glow on the horizon. Several seconds later it brightened and see could see the rocket streaking out from behind the distant trees. 

To photograph the launch I set up my camera to take 20 second exposures. I then used a remote release so we could sit several feet away and not be distracted by the lights on the camera and the camera wouldn't be affected by any shaking we did on the pier. I started the above exposure just as we realized that the glow was probably the rocket igniting. 
The rest of these were taken in sequence with minimal pauses between shots. You can see in the second one a gap in the streak as the first stage dropped off and the second ignited. The second stage dropped off in the middle of the fourth picture below and the rocket coasted for a few seconds before the third stage ignited in the fifth picture. 

After the rocket moved further right you could see the plume of smoke left when the third stage ignited (below, all the way to the right edge).

And finally, I layered all of these together to get one complete view of the launch.

Both the viewing and the photographs turned out as good as I could have hoped for. And now we know where to look for future launches as more and more launches are planned from Wallops Island.

Cow-nosed Ray

This past weekend we had a Labor Day party and had an uninvited guest. Not that we were too upset by their appearance.
We had walked out to the end of our pier and were standing around talking while the kids used colored chalk to mark every nail on the pier. Then suddenly several of us saw a fin appear out of the creek. The water was mid-tide rising and has been running a little on the high side all week. The creek is always very muddy so all we could see was the exposed fin; nothing below water. There were a few more sighting over the next couple of minutes.
The only reasonable identification would be a cow-nosed ray. The creek is too shallow for a dolphin and probably too shallow for the sharks found in the bay. Plus, the fin seemed to come up from the side and back down instead of arising straight out of the water.
This is the first ray that we have seen from our pier. I did some a few several years ago while kayaking closer to the bay. They were moving around in shallow water behind Grandview Nature Preserve. At first we thought they must be dolphins, not realizing how come the rays are, but some investigating afterwards convinced us that they were rays. Not least of all was the fact that we always saw two fins come up together. That definitely seemed like feeding behavior.

Sarrecenia

Recently, my wife and I visited the Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens in Richmond, VA. It was a favorite place of ours to visit when we lived in Williamsburg. It has a beautiful rose garden as well as a wonderful lake with some nice wooded gardens. And the conservancy is one of the key features.
But on this visit we saw something new and wonderful. Part of the lake is now a wetland garden with a prize collection of pitcher plants. Not as well renowned as their friends the Venus flytraps, pitcher plants are also carnivorous plants that collect and digest insects to make up for the low-nutrient soil they grow in. From the Botanical Society of America, I learned that there are many different types of pitcher plants in several different orders while there is only one flytrap species.All pitcher plants have a large tube that attracts the insect. Once inside the pitcher, or pitfall trap, the insect is unable to escape and falls into a pool of digestive juices. The insides of the pitcher leaves are waxy so the insect falls into the pool. On many pitcher plants, there are downward pointing hairs to make escape that much harder.
And while all of this is quite interesting, what really struck us was the flowers. These are some of the strangest flowers we have seen. Again, referring to the BSA for details, the sepals are a burgundy color, instead of the normal green, and stay attached. The petals are fragile and quickly fall off leaving the sepals to look like the petals. And this is only the beginning. The style grows into a shield-like structure. When the petals are attached, the droop down around the edges of this shield. The flower is normally tilted downwards so the shield becomes a collection plate for pollen. Nectar is also dripped onto the inside of the shield. When a fly lands and crawls into the shield, it pollinates the flower.
According to the sign at the gardens, these are all Sarracenia Leucophylla and are native to southeastern US wetlands.
The first photo shows the flower with the petals still attached. Notice how the hang limply. The second is a different one after the petals have fallen off.

Below is another view inside the shield where you can see the stamen.

And finally some nice group pictures. Notice how the flowers and the pitchers come up on separate stalks and slightly separated.

Pacific Loon

About two weeks ago a Pacific Loon was found at a local residential pond. It is a very unusual bird to find on the east coast. The bird hung around for a week so last weekend my wife and I headed down to see if. When we arrived we aw a few birders along one side but we decided to drive around the edge of the pond to see if there was a place to park and what else we might see. On the far side of the pond we found a Horned Grebe in breeding plumage. It afforded us several good looks but a little far for camera range.

Horned Grebe

Common (left) and Pacific (right) Loons

There were also plenty of Lesser Scaup and an American Coot. We then drove back to the front side of the pond where we had seen the other birder when we first arrived. They were packing up but mentioned they had seen the Pacific Loon and it was moving all over the pond. So we set up the spotting scope and starting hunting through the loons that we could see in the middle of the pond. the Pacific Loon isn't a whole lot different from the Common Loons that were in winter plumage. So we had to study each one. Key identifying marks are a thinner bill, browner plumage, and less white on the throat and around the eye compared to Common Loons. The birds were hard to study since they would only stay on the surface for a few seconds before diving. And then they would come up quite a distance away. So we would have to watch for one to surface, get the scope on it and then start looking for the field marks anew since we couldn't tell if it was the one had been looking at or not. Eventually we could start telling that one was different from the rest and finally identify it as the Pacific Loon. It was a fun challenge. Plus, there was one Common Loon that was most of the way to molting to breeding plumage; something we seldom see here in the south.

Here are a few pictures of the Pacific Loon and breeding Common Loon.

Pacific Loon

Common Loon in breeding plumage

And this turned out to be a three loon winter as I also saw Red-throated Loons on the Christmas Bird Count.

Be sure to check out the other outstanding bird photographs at Wild Bird Wednesday.

Meteor Show

Last night as my wife and I were headed out to dinner we took a long route trying to see if we could catch a glimpse of comet PANSTARRS but couldn't find it. But as we approached the local Air Force base we saw a bright light streak across the sky. I thought maybe it was a plane because it was low but seemed level and traveled right along the line of the runway (parallel) to us. But my wife saw what she thought was a tail. Well, it turns out it was a meteor that was seen up and down the east coast.

And then on the way home after dinner we saw a shooting star; much smaller than the meteor. And pretty interesting since the American Meteor Society calls March the slowest month for meteor showers.

Quite an interesting night.

Suffolk Art Show

A local, small art museum holds an annual juried photography show. A friend of mine convinced me to submit some photos last year. I managed to get one of three selected. It was actually my least favorite of the three I submitted but perhaps the most "artistic." It was this rather graphical crushed bike on a bridge in Amsterdam.

Dutch Transportation

This year I came up with three more to submit and again one was selected. After seeing the show, I'm kind of surprised that I got any in as the jurist had quite a different artistic eye than I do. I was not impressed with many of the selections that got in but I guess that is the nature of art. Most of my interaction with photographers are people who focus on nature and landscape photography. Much of this show is more fine art and graphical photography. So it is definitely interesting seeing how others approach photography.

Perhaps the most interesting submission was a small box with three glass panes in it. Each pane had a portion of a picture of a flock of birds departing a tree. There was a small light in the back that lit the scene. It gave an interesting 3D impression.

Below are my submissions with the top one being the one selected.

Lupines on Hurricane Ridge

Rainy Afternoon

Northern Gannets

Early Spring Visitors

Today, the first day of daylight savings time, we have a few uncommon visitors to the yard. I was out taking test shots with my new Canon 7D when I heard some shorebirds approaching. They were only making single peek calls but as they flew overhead I saw that they were Killdeer. They landed in a muddy spot in the marsh and started feeding. Finally they gave their classic kill-deer call. I switched lens and called my wife back to see them. Luckily they stayed for quite some time. Really too far to photograph except for identification purposes. We've had Killdeer over the marsh before but this is the first time I remember seeing them land. And four at once!

We then saw a Tree Swallow, first-of-season, and Laughing Gull, also first-of-season. The Tree Swallow is new for our yard list. Probably a bookkeeping error as we both think we have seen them before here. We ended up with 28 species including two immature Bald Eagles that seemed to be fighting for the same wind. they were slowing rising on a thermal over the creek but once seemed to purposely run into the other occasionally. We also saw a Double-crested Cormorant swimming in the creek. Again,  I don't remember seeing one swimming in the creek right here.

Good way to call Spring closer.