I noticed three deer in the field bordering our house this afternoon and decided to try photographing them through the telescope. The back of our yard is lined with thirty feet of heavy brush and trees, on the other side of which lies the field.
I read that you could use a normal tripod for day viewing so I gave it a shot. While much lighter and easier to carry it really wasn't up to the job; finicky and wobbly. I lugged the heavy duty equatorial mount tripod (oh I love this thing) through the brush and to the field's edge.
The deer were about a city block away alternating between grazing and alertness. Mostly alertness as every car and gun-racked pickup that goes by stops to gawk or size them up for the freezer. Eventually the deer slid, one by one, into the forest shadows and the photo op was over.
Now evening approaches and the house is filled with Faith's piano practice. I get up from reading and head out to dig on the pond. Standing out in the backyard is one of the deer, peeking in at us.
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Zeke LOVES swimming, but he can't do it for just swimmings sake. He must have a catalyst. I couldn't figure this one out though. We were hiking and he just got in the water (typical), but actually moving through the water for an extended distance was phenominal. Then I realized, he was headed for Jerry!
If you haven't found it yet, clicking the little weather thingy in the upper right corner of this page takes you to our weather page. We have a weather station at the house which uploads a summary image ("broadcast style") as well as a text file of readings at five minute intervals. I wrote a script which stuffs the data into a mysql database and then uses it to create the line graphs on the page. Doug, a fellow weather observer, also uploads his data and it is being loaded it into the database as well. Today I wrote a new weather graph to show the current day's temperatures at both of our weather stations on the same graph.
In case you are curious the graphs are created using JpGraph, a nice little graphing module for PHP.
If you scroll down far enough on the page you'll find this chart of the predicted astronomical viewing conditions for our area.
It's very slick that your outside temp graph above is always a LIVE representation! I had thought it was only a screenshot until I returned to the page hours later and found new data!
Perhaps you could make this data available in a more palatable way:
http://www.culturelab-uk.com/site/templates/print_view.asp?ID=96
Update: Zeke and I went for a walk just before getting dark and found the three deer back in the field. I sent Zeke running into the field but they stood still and he couldn't see them. Tricky.
A truck pulled up and the driver yells out, "Deer are really out tonight, we've seen seven of them so far."
"Yep," I add, nodding with great meaning and wisdom. He nods and drives off.
This morning I let Zeke out and halfway to his "bathroom" in the woods he turns and tears across the yard barking. All three deer are over by the apple tree. Zeke actually got within a few feet of one. Made his day.