Perseids Meteor and Other Pics
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yhlee and spouse, myrialux and I left for a cabin at the Hideaway Ranch and Refuge as this weekend was (a) the peak of the Perseids meteor shower, (b) a waning moon and (c) clear as a bell thanks to the massive heat wave with no end in sight.
Photos of meteors (planes, satellites, bugs), dinosaurs, cats, horses and SCORPIONNNSSS below the cut.
Sky pics first!
We set an alarm for 4:30 AM both nights to go out and watch for meteors as midnight-dawn tends to be the best time to see meteors, as your part of the Earth is rotating into the debris field that makes for meteors.
Saturday morning, 4:30 AM we sat out on the porch in metal chairs because we totally didn't notice the Adirondack chairs at the firepit next to the deck, which would have supported our heads, so we awkwardly leaned against the porch railing instead. And took no photos.
Sunday morning at 4:30 we had the chairs up on the deck, and the faint chuffs and (clops? teeth clatters?) of nearby horses, tree frogs, and random insects to accompany us. As well as the NightCap Camera app, which I'd found earlier in the day when we were wondering how to take long exposures with iPhones. While we didn't have tripods, balancing the phones on the porch railings seemed to work with a minimum of camera shake. I assume the app was compensating for that, to an extent.
I got a lot of blank or blurry photos. The Meteor setting didn't capture anything, but the Stars setting got a nice starfield twice (and a bunch of blurs the other times), and the Star Trails setting got a couple of activity-filled pics.
I don't know how much the app is interpreting. You should also assume that all my identifications in the photos have big invisible question marks after them. I'm defaulting to meteors mostly because of a pretty damn nice meteor show happening at the time--I saw probably 15 meteors in the hour we were out there, most of those in the first half hour.
Click on the picture to go to a larger version on all of the star/sky pics.
Starfields. I did push the brightness in Photoshop to make them easier to see.
ALIEN SPACECRAFT!1!!!1!!!
Meteors and other things #1. Remember: question marks after every ID! And I saw a LOT of satellites while out there, and several planes--we were an hour and a half drive from a major US airport, but most of the planes were north of us. I didn't notice any directly overhead where the phone was pointing, although that doesn't mean they weren't there.
Meteors and other things #2
Dinosaur herd you pass on the way to and from the area where the cabins are. (Dinosaur Valley State Park is nearby, hence the dinosaur theme in a lot of this area)
Back porch of the cabin. Wide-angle setting on my phone, so it looks deeper than it is. That's a hot tub to the right but it was TOO DAMN HOT to want to get in it. We pulled the green chairs you see just beyond the deck up onto the deck for our early-Sunday-morning watching.
Scorpion-Bob. A Texas bark scorpion who lived in the sink. We eventually figured out how to flip Scorpion-Bob into a glass on Saturday evening and tossed him outside with a "Thank you for your service!" (you can see the corpses of two of his victims in the pic), but at 3AM, when I went to the bathroom, there was ANOTHER SCORPION in the sink. Yeah.
Closeup Scorpion-Bob.
And now HORSES! I emailed the ranch owners to ask the horses' names. Their reply: "The horses are named after Native American tribes: The mostly white one is Apache, mostly brown is Shawnee, and mostly black one is Blackfoot."
The mostly black one isn't pictured here--it showed up only in the morning.
Grazing outside.
Shawnee noticed me and came up for TREATS. Which, alas, did not exist.
The horses, learning that we were just going to photograph them and not pat them or feed them, decided to see if the people at the front of the cabin were going to pat or feed them.
After learning that we, in fact, were also not going to feed or pat them there, they stuck their heads into the porch just in front of the window and LURKED for half an hour or so. (It was probably also cooler, with escaping A/C and the shade.)
Have a bonus llama for making it past the scorpion pics! I did adjust the brightness on the llama because otherwise it looked like a llama-shaped black hole.
The cats were upset thatyhlee and husband were here, upsetting their daily routine, and were alternately needy and weirded out.
Sora is here, disdaining me because I would not let him sit on my chest while I was trying to work.
Sora in our bedroom, where he spent most of the time that he was not hiding in my office closet, emulating a hippo in a lake in his cat bed.
And finally D.Va, who NEEEEEEDED love and attention butmyrialux was WORKING and on a CALL which was TERRIBLE and I had to PICK HER UP AND LET HER DROOL ON MY SHOULDER after this image because she was UNLOVED and NOBODY WAS GIVING HER ATTENTION.
yhlee and spouse, myrialux and I left for a cabin at the Hideaway Ranch and Refuge as this weekend was (a) the peak of the Perseids meteor shower, (b) a waning moon and (c) clear as a bell thanks to the massive heat wave with no end in sight.Photos of meteors (planes, satellites, bugs), dinosaurs, cats, horses and SCORPIONNNSSS below the cut.
Sky pics first!
We set an alarm for 4:30 AM both nights to go out and watch for meteors as midnight-dawn tends to be the best time to see meteors, as your part of the Earth is rotating into the debris field that makes for meteors.
Saturday morning, 4:30 AM we sat out on the porch in metal chairs because we totally didn't notice the Adirondack chairs at the firepit next to the deck, which would have supported our heads, so we awkwardly leaned against the porch railing instead. And took no photos.
Sunday morning at 4:30 we had the chairs up on the deck, and the faint chuffs and (clops? teeth clatters?) of nearby horses, tree frogs, and random insects to accompany us. As well as the NightCap Camera app, which I'd found earlier in the day when we were wondering how to take long exposures with iPhones. While we didn't have tripods, balancing the phones on the porch railings seemed to work with a minimum of camera shake. I assume the app was compensating for that, to an extent.
I got a lot of blank or blurry photos. The Meteor setting didn't capture anything, but the Stars setting got a nice starfield twice (and a bunch of blurs the other times), and the Star Trails setting got a couple of activity-filled pics.
I don't know how much the app is interpreting. You should also assume that all my identifications in the photos have big invisible question marks after them. I'm defaulting to meteors mostly because of a pretty damn nice meteor show happening at the time--I saw probably 15 meteors in the hour we were out there, most of those in the first half hour.
Click on the picture to go to a larger version on all of the star/sky pics.
Starfields. I did push the brightness in Photoshop to make them easier to see.
ALIEN SPACECRAFT!1!!!1!!!
Meteors and other things #1. Remember: question marks after every ID! And I saw a LOT of satellites while out there, and several planes--we were an hour and a half drive from a major US airport, but most of the planes were north of us. I didn't notice any directly overhead where the phone was pointing, although that doesn't mean they weren't there.
Meteors and other things #2
Dinosaur herd you pass on the way to and from the area where the cabins are. (Dinosaur Valley State Park is nearby, hence the dinosaur theme in a lot of this area)
Back porch of the cabin. Wide-angle setting on my phone, so it looks deeper than it is. That's a hot tub to the right but it was TOO DAMN HOT to want to get in it. We pulled the green chairs you see just beyond the deck up onto the deck for our early-Sunday-morning watching.
Scorpion-Bob. A Texas bark scorpion who lived in the sink. We eventually figured out how to flip Scorpion-Bob into a glass on Saturday evening and tossed him outside with a "Thank you for your service!" (you can see the corpses of two of his victims in the pic), but at 3AM, when I went to the bathroom, there was ANOTHER SCORPION in the sink. Yeah.
Closeup Scorpion-Bob.
And now HORSES! I emailed the ranch owners to ask the horses' names. Their reply: "The horses are named after Native American tribes: The mostly white one is Apache, mostly brown is Shawnee, and mostly black one is Blackfoot."
The mostly black one isn't pictured here--it showed up only in the morning.
Grazing outside.
Shawnee noticed me and came up for TREATS. Which, alas, did not exist.
The horses, learning that we were just going to photograph them and not pat them or feed them, decided to see if the people at the front of the cabin were going to pat or feed them.
After learning that we, in fact, were also not going to feed or pat them there, they stuck their heads into the porch just in front of the window and LURKED for half an hour or so. (It was probably also cooler, with escaping A/C and the shade.)
Have a bonus llama for making it past the scorpion pics! I did adjust the brightness on the llama because otherwise it looked like a llama-shaped black hole.
The cats were upset that
yhlee and husband were here, upsetting their daily routine, and were alternately needy and weirded out.Sora is here, disdaining me because I would not let him sit on my chest while I was trying to work.
Sora in our bedroom, where he spent most of the time that he was not hiding in my office closet, emulating a hippo in a lake in his cat bed.
And finally D.Va, who NEEEEEEDED love and attention but
myrialux was WORKING and on a CALL which was TERRIBLE and I had to PICK HER UP AND LET HER DROOL ON MY SHOULDER after this image because she was UNLOVED and NOBODY WAS GIVING HER ATTENTION.
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Hi Scorpion Bob!
Love not!Hippo cat.
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