The moon was so bright it hurt to look at. Even with a filter it was like getting a lunar laser tattoo right on the retina.
The nice thing about lots of light is that you can run it through lots of lenses. This shot is through a 10mm lens using a barlow extender, resulting in 5mm or 200x magnification. If the moon looks off it's because the telescope reverses the view, the camera is at another angle, and I'm too lazy to try and correct it afterwards.
I call this area hop-skip-and-jump since it features a series of craters lined up like Happy Rolling Ball. They were clearly defined to my eye, but the camera didn't see things quite the same.
We were working against encroaching dew to capture these. What do you do about dew? Circulating fans? Desiccant blankets? I'm sure I'll be much happier stargazing in the heart of winter when my only worry is why I can't feel my nose or fingers anymore.
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email thisWe installed a cat door in the basement at our previous house. Smudge was in heaven. Inside...outside...inside...outside...without any of the annoying human interaction. As a bonus he could bring in his latest victim (spelled: b-i-r-d or m-o-u-s-e), let it loose, and try to track it down through the jungle we otherwise called the living room. We knew this because the house had a funky cathedral ceiling connecting living room and bedroom, which provided an acoustical front row seat to his late night safaris.
Strange tearing-the-house-apart noise in the middle of the night? Must be Smudge. If we ever had had a real burglar I would have stumbled downstairs and stuffed him out the cat door just out of habit. Bad burglar, bad!
Sure, we could have closed the cat door, but it was the result of carefully weighing the difference between two evils. An unhappy cat locked in all night taking it out on furniture and litter box, or clean litter box with an occasional kitty treat (spelled: e-n-t-r-a-i-l-s) squished between toes on the way to make coffee. Strangling the cat should have been the obvious choice, but we are slightly dim and slaves to pets.
What finally nixed the cat door was the realization that Smudge wasn't always re-catching the prey he let go in the house. We spent too many a morning trying to reason with panicked birds or corner crazed critters. We also started noticing holes chewed out of the corner of food boxes in the kitchen. Mice.
We bought some havahart plastic mouse traps, which really are quite clever. Slide the door open, put a tidbit inside, and balance it so that the lid stays open. Mouse walks in, balance changes, door shuts, mouse locked in.
In the morning I'd check the traps and if any were closed, heavy with mouse, I'd take it along for the commute. We lived a mile down a dirt road so somewhere around three quarters of a mile I'd pull over, lean out the door, ease the trap open and give it a good shake onto the roadside. What emerged was a nervous mouse, wet with sweat, that zipped right into the woods.
I sometimes wonder about those mice. Did they find a local country gal and settle down? Suffer through new mouse on the block syndrome? Maybe they have homing instincts and worked their way back to the house? It might have been the same few mice being driven down the road each day. A scary, but free, commuting system. Like the LA freeway.
Joey, our favorite Accordion wielding programmer, shares a great little story about his bad karma mouse incident.
That looks a super place to hike. Both Zeke and Faith look like they're enjoying themselves.
Mt Jackson was Faith's idea and a great hike. Waterfalls and little streams most of the way up, mushrooms galore, and a panoramic view on top. Mt Washington is behind Faith's head, hiding in the clouds.
At this point we are tired in a smiley kind of way. But we had only gone 1/3 of the hike. All 3 of us took aspirin (adult buffered for dog tummies) after we were done. Zeke's biggest hike -- and our biggest hike come to think of it since both he and I had Spring injuries -- was a total success!
Jerry doesn't read packages. I read packages. You can let the mouse go or just delicately toss it into the garbage (to die a grisly and lengthy death of thirst with a smattering of hunger and fear thrown in). You never have to even SEE a mouse again! Havahart!
We let 'em go. Now, if the mouse FILLS the entire Havahart, it is typically a rat. I was once attempting to empty the unit, holding it upside down, opening the trap door, and shaking vigorously. Nothing came out, but the trap was still heavy. More vigorous shaking, and a leg popped out. Still more, and SLOOOP! I didn't think that animal could have fit into that trap! I found out later that it probably was a "field mouse" otherwise known as a rat (but alot nicer looking than a city rat that I've seen in pictures or cartoons and glimpsed from a distance as I passed Washington Square Park in NYC in the dark).