Last week, I woke up to a rare sunny morning, so I decided to go back to Ridgefield NWR, but sadly, there was dense fog. So, I came back home and to Steigerwald (~5 mi from home) to see what I could find. Steigerwald was reopened last year after a great deal of construction and is still recovering, so there is not nearly as much wildlife as Ridgefield, but I did manage to find some.
I made another trip on the auto tour at Ridgefield and managed to find a little wildlife.
Tundra Swan and Northern Shovelers
e woke up to a sunny day for a change, so we decided to go for a drive. We went through Gresham and Sandy up to Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood. Lunch at Timberline was great and then we went home via Hood River, making a loop around Mt Hood. There was some nice fall colors and a lot more snow than I expected.
I’ve been busy building the RV-14, so I haven’t had the camera out lately, but today we went to the airshow, so here’s a few snapshots!
Today we drove the 4 mile auto loop trail at the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge and did a little walking around. Despite crazy weather, ranging from blue sky and sun to horizontal hail, I managed to get a few good pictures of some of the wildlife.
Today was the first day in a long time that I woke up at home to blue skies! I’ve been wanting to check out Falls Creek Falls for a while now and today was the day. Before heading out, I decided to fill up the truck ($5.39/gal - ouch!) and check on the local birds, I got a couple of shots of an osprey and found a new bird, the Western Tanager.
Osprey
Western Tanager
With a full tank of gas and fresh batteries for the camera, we headed to Falls Creek Falls just north of Carson, WA. The trail to the falls is about 1.7 miles from the parking lot with 750’ of elevation gain. It runs along Falls Creek most of the way and it a beautiful hike. With all of the rain we’ve had, the falls are spectacular! This is easily one of the best waterfalls in the area and since it’s a bit of the beaten path, it’s not inundated with tourists. The waterfall images are full size in the waterfalls gallery under the nature menu above.
Today Lisa and I went for a 4 mile hike around the newly reopened Steigerwald Lake National Wildlife Refuge. It was a beautiful day and great hike. I was hoping to see lots of birds, but only came across a few birds including a few Cinnamon Teal and an unknown (Swallow maybe), as well as a turtle, a flying deer and some nice big Lupin.
I was on my way home from Grove Field and the weather had cleared, so I decided to make a brief stop at Lacamas Creek to look for birds. I came around a corner, and a Heron flew off and I took about 5 more steps and came face to face with another Great Blue Heron about 30 feet away. These guys usually fly off when I get within 200 feet, so I was surprised that this one stuck around and continued looking for fish while I snapped pictures. He eventually flew off after catching his dinner.
As the weather is getting warmer, but unfortunately not drier, some of my favorite subjects are more active. I’ve found a few good spots to watch some of the local birds and have located several active Osprey nests and one Eagle nest. I’m amazed at the number of Bald Eagles in the local area and have managed to get a couple of pictures of them so far. I recently purchased a new camera, the amazing 45MP Canon R5 and a new lens, the Canon RF100-500mm and 2X extender, which have allowed me to get some great results so far.
Spring is also time for flowers and we recently visited the lily fields in Lacamas Regional Park where there are thousands of the local Camas Lily. They should be in full bloom in a week or two, but they are off to a good start.
I’ve uploaded a lot of new pictures (a few below) and will continue to do so. As I have time, I’m going to try to add captions and information about them. I’m also hoping to go back and re-process some of my older images with some great new tools, so stay tuned.
Bald Eagle along the Washougal River
Male Anna’s Hummingbird
Great Blue Heron
Camas Lily
Nesting Osprey
A lot has changed since I last updated this site 18 months ago, so this will be a brief summary and a new start to the blog. I don’t make any money off this site, so I can’t promise to keep it up to date, but it serves as a good place to store and share some of my photographic work.
The changes start in the Fall of 2020 when I started an endeavor to build an RV-14 airplane. That project is well underway and you can see my build log here: https://eaabuilderslog.org/?blproject&proj=7hyHc5ZYi&sid=
The next major change started in May of 2021 when we moved to Washougal, WA. The Pacific Northwest is. beautiful and we love it here, but the weather is not very conducive to astronomy or astrophotography. That has led me to another major change as far as the website is concerned…I have decided to give up astrophotography, sell my equipment, and use the funds to upgrade my photo equipment. I’m now concentrating on capturing the beauty of the local area.
I’ve added a lot of pictures of birds, flowers, and waterfalls and will continue to do so as I get out and use my new camera! Below are just a few of the new additions.
I’m once again getting ready to update my page and I realized this blog post, that I started in the fall of 2020, never got finished and published, so I’ll publish it now (4/2022) before I write a new one.
I don’t know if anybody actually follows this blog, but if you do, you know I’ve neglected this website for the last six months. The last post was our trip back from North Carolina after buying the airplane and I’ve been pretty distracted with airplane stuff and training Brandon and Caitlin. Also the smoke, COVID restrictions, flying, and other distractions have kept me away from both astrophotography and this website. The only thing I did manage to shoot was Comet Neowise (C2020 F3). I have a good single frame picture posted here, but I still need to process all of the data I collected. Processing comets is something new to me (different because they move) and will be a learning experience that I have yet to tackle. I’m hoping time, weather, and smoke will allow me to return to astrophotography soon.
I’ll make another post soon of some of the flying I’ve done recently.
Comet C2020 F3 (NEOWISE) w/IRIDIUM flare
Day One
The end of a long day of cross country flying and the beginning of a new adventure! I bought an airplane today and Brandon and I flew it for 8.8hours on the first day of 3 or 4 it will take to get home from North Carolina. Brandon hasn't soloed yet, but we're getting some of his cross country training done by actually crossing the country!
Today we went from Hendersonville, NC to Enid, OK with several stops in between. Tomorrow we'll fly by Philmont, Farmington, NM, Monument Valley, and end in Page, AZ.
Day Two
Started with the FBO courtesy car, and ancient Crown Victoria Police Interceptor. We were both thinking Blues Brothers with the cop car, so we had to get the picture with the sun glasses! First leg was from Enid, OK to Guymon, OK in the middle of the pan handle...We flew right over the top of Vance AFB, where I went to pilot training. The rest of the journey over western OK was very quit and very flat.
Next leg was to Raton, NM near the eastern edge of the Rockies. Towards the end, it stated getting bumpy and the winds in Raton were near our limits, so I did the landing.
The original plan was to make our way over the Rockies near Cimmaron, Angel Fire and Taos. With the strong winds, a few clouds, and moderate turbulence, we decided to take the long (and safer) way around south through Santa Fe and then north on the west side of the mountains to Farmington, NM. Our little plane just doesn't want to go high enough to go over the middle.
Day Three
We Left Farmington, NM on a cold clear morning and headed to Shiprock, then to the Four Corners, Monument Valley, Rainbow Bridge, and Page, AZ.
A quick refueling and rest in Page and we were off to fly over the Grand Canyon and stopped for lunch in Boulder City. Finally, we dodged a few rain showers on our way to William J. Fox Field in Lancaster, CA. This is significant, because this is where Brandon took his first flight...he was about 18mo old when I took him up in the Kitfox on the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers first flight.
Tomorrow, we will head to San Luis Obispo to see Caitlin (wx permitting...pretty iffy right now) and make the final flight back to Lincoln, CA
Day Four
Final day of the trip...we had to skip the visit to San Luis Obispo due to poor weather there (sorry Caitlin.) We had to wait a little for the weather to improve at home, so we took of and flew over the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve State Natural Reserve and went to Rosamond Sky Park to visit my friend and fellow U-2 Test Pilot Ed "K-Town" Knouse. It was great seeing K-Town again and checking out his airplane project: https://www.facebook.com/The-Journey-KTOWNs-adventures-in-a-Pietenpol-683415732120277/
Once the weather started improving we headed home. I flew that leg in case we need to fly IFR through the weather that was just starting to improve. Brandon took the opportunity to indulge in some in-flight entertainment. It's been an amazing journey, but we're both glad to be home!
Overall, we ended up flying for 25.9 hours, about 2300nm (2645sm) and burned 219.5 gal of 100LL fuel for about 12MPG and 8.5 Gal/hr
All of the pictures from the trip are here: https://www.peck.photos/aviation-1#/archer-trip/
It’s been a very cloudy winter so far and I’ve only been able to get the telescope out for 2 nights in the last 6 weeks! I was able to get up to Blue Canyon to try my hand at a difficult target…IC 342. This galaxy is pretty large in the sky at about 20 arcmin (the full Moon is about 30 arcmin), but it’s not very bright (magnitude 9) and is somewhat obscured by the Milky Way. The sky was clear at Blue Canyon, but the seeing conditions (random motion of the stars due to atmospheric turbulence) was pretty poor. The second night was a little better and I ended up with an image that is not my best, but good enough to publish. Maybe some day I try to improve on it!
My main reason for buying the new telescope (AT8RC) was to prepare for what astrophotographers refer to as “Galaxy Season.” In late winter and early spring in the northern hemisphere, there are many interesting galaxies and galaxy clusters that rise around sunset and are visible most of the night, hence the name galaxy season. So far, I have mostly imaged the larger (closer) galaxies because my telescope had a fairly wide field of view (1.34 degrees or about 3x the full moon.) The new telescope has a much longer focal length (1625mm vs 563mm) and so acts like a telephoto lens that allows me to image much smaller objects. The field of view with the new scope is about 0.5 degrees, or about the size of the full moon. This image of NGC 891 is my first “smaller” galaxy. The resolution is a little less than my other images because, ultimately, my limiting factor is the atmosphere…which is why NASA spends Billions of dollars to put telescopes in space! A little more info can be found here: NGC 891
When I was eating up and testing the new telescope, I noticed that the constellation Orion was in view, so I decided the point the scope at the Horsehead Nebula to see what kind of resolution I could get. I was very pleased with the result, so I spent the next few nights collecting 5 hours of Hydrogen-Alpha (Ha) data and 6 hours of RGB to make this image. I’m very pleased to get so much detail with this narrow field of view. For comparison with my other telescope, check out the Horsehead and Flame nebula picture in the Astrophotography gallery.
I recently found a smoking deal on a telescope I have been considering for a while, so I jumped on it an I’m now the proud owner of a nearly new Astro-Tech 8”, f/8 Richey-Cretien telescope. It took a little work to get the collimation (alignment of the mirrors) right, but I’m now very pleased with the results. As a test I decided to re-shoot the Bubble Nebula to compare results. This new telescope has a much longer focal length (1625mm vs 563mm with the other scope) which gives me a much smaller field a view to go after smaller objects like distant galaxies. So far, I’m pleased with the results…I hope you are too!
With Halloween just around the corner, what better target to image than the Phantom Galaxy! I was finally able to make it back up to Blue Canyon to finish collecting data on this image just in time for Halloween. This galaxy has low surface brightness which makes it difficult to see visually, requiring ideal conditions…sometimes it’s there and sometimes not…hence the nickname Phantom. This galaxy is 33 million light years away and about the same size as our galaxy. It’s face on orientation and “Grand Design” spiral structure make it very beautiful. I’ve also been slowly adding titles and descriptions to my other photos (concentrating on the aviation ones for now) and will continue to update them whenever I have time.
In honor of my son, who is a Subaru fanatic who drives a 2006 WRX STI, and my wife who about to take delivery of a brand new 2020 Outback, I decided to image the Subaru Cluster! It was a beautiful night at Blue Canyon last night and I was able to collect several hours of good images of M45. There is more details about this object on the astrophotography page.
My first update to the new site! I have added my image of the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) and have been slowly adding descriptions to some of my U-2 photos. My goal is to eventually have descriptions and photographic details for each image on the site. The image of Andromeda was taken on Monday, September 23rd from Blue Canyon and was a total of 5:40 hrs of exposure including exposures of 30s, 60s, 120s, 180s, and 300s on my ZWO ASI071 camera. As always…questions and comments are welcome.
