Feeding Frenzy of Feathered Friends

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Do you know what bird this is?  Hint - It's probably one of the most abundunt of all the birds in the world, so much so that it's become somewhat of a pest.  It was introduced to North America when 50 pairs were brought over from Europe and released in Brooklyn, New York in 1852.  They have spread into the far north of Canada and into Central America.

This is the female House Sparrow feeding it's babies right outside my back door.  There are four babies in total.  Gloria and I have much fun watching them stick their little heads out of their nest begging to be fed.

Click HERE to see a picture I took last year of a male  House Sparrow mating with the female.

More Birds of Prey

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Thanks for all the nice e-mails I received on what type of  hawk is in the picture of my previous installment.  These guys can really be tough to figure out.  They tend to look very similar, so we have to look at the details.  So, more images would be nice, right?  I took 61 pictures of these visitors (there were two birds, one of them staying up in a tree).   So, as I went through the rest of the pictures I found the one you see at the top.  The hawk in the previous image is now slightly below the new hawk you see here.  As you can see, the main difference is the bars on the breast versus the streaks on the other.  I was suspicious that the lower bird was an Immature Red-shouldered Hawk, so when I saw the image of the other bird, it confirmed it.  The bars on this bird are on an adult Red-shouldered Hawk.

Take a look at these really nice images of Red-shouldered Hawks taken by Raul Quinones and you'll see the resemblance is very good: Red-shouldered Hawk by Raul Quinones

Bird of Prey

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I spotted this beautiful bird of prey perching on my satellite dish, scanning my backyard for a juicy rodent I'm sure.  I quickly grabbed my Canon camera, put my 300mm lens on it and took this picture.  I'm pleasantly surprised at the nice quality of the image, considering I was shooting the lens hand held, through a plate glass door and leaves from a foreground bush.  I did help to keep it steady by turning the image stabilizer on and shooting at 1/2000 of a second.  I also leaned the front of the lens against the plate glass.  A few mintes later, it flew to a nearby tree, but then flew back down to the lawn.  I think he was looking for moles, because I know I have lots of mole hills in my yard.

I think I know what type of hawk this guy is, but I'm not sure.  Let me know what you think it is.

The Owl and the Cigar

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At the upper left of this image is the spiral galaxy M108 and at the lower right is the planetary nebula, M97, also known as the "Owl Nebula".  Both of these object are in the constellation Ursa Major, now seen high in the sky during this Spring season.

Looking like a big, fat cigar, M108 is a spiral galaxy viewed edge on.  Unlike most spirals, there is no bright central bulge seen here, apparently because the there is so much dusty matter hiding it from our view.  These dusty knots are easily seen in the enlarged image.

The two dark spots make this nebula look like a spooky owl.  Classified as a planetary nebula, it is no planet, but a star toward the end of its life.  The star in the center of the nebula is literally blowing its outer layers into space creating an ever enlarging bubble.

Even though it may seem like these two objects are relatively close to each other, it is far from it.  The Owl Nebula is 3,000 light years from us and well within our Milky Way galaxy, but M 108 is about 45 million light years away, 15 thousand time further away than the Owl.  If you look real close at the enlarged image and your monitor is not adjusted too dark, you'll see a very small galaxy to the lower right of the Owl (right next to a star).  Just to the left of the Owl are a few even fainter galaxies all at enormous distances from us.

In this graphic of Ursa Major, there is a small rectangle just below the bowl of the Dipper.  This is the area taken up by the top picture.

The almost two hour exposure of the image is a combination of 11 ten minute shots taken with my 190mm Mak/Newt f/5.3 telescope.

Eagle Nest with Babies

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These are captured frames from a streaming video of a pair of bald eagles in the process of raising three babies.  On this date 4-3-2011, two of the three eggs have hatched.  The images below show one of the eagles feeding the oldest baby, born on 4-2-2011 scraps of rabbit meat.  The other baby born today, can't quite take food scraps yet.  Take a look at this marvelous live video feed from the nest in Decorah, Iowa at this link:
Decorah Eagles

Jupiter and Mercury Conjunction

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The word "conjunction" may bring back memories of english class, but it's a totally different meaning in astronomy.  In this case it means the meeting of two or more celestial objects in the sky.  In this case, Jupiter and Mercury were just about 2 degrees apart on the evening of March 15, 2011.  Watch them in the western sky for the next few evenings and you'll see Jupiter drop lower in the sky and Mercury rise higher.

This image was taken with my Driod X cell phone.

Even though these planets seem to be very close together, they are actually billions of miles apart.  Mercury is a little over 93 million miles away, but Jupiter it about 550 million miles.  If you  were to view the Sun and these planets from out in space they would look like the graphic below.

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Winter Scenes with my new Droid X cell phone

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We got about 4 or 5 inches of snow overnight, giving me a chance to try out my new camera.  

The Winter scenes above were taken with the camera on my new Droid X cell phone.  The camera installed on the latest phones are pretty remarkable.  Clicking on the images above will give you an image that is 1600 X 902 pixels.  This is only about half of what the 8 MPs camera actually gets, which is 3264 X 1840.  The quality of the images is amazingly good, considering the lens is only about 1/16" in diameter.  This lens does double duty, since it is also used for HD video that can be watched on a big screen HD TV (something I need to try as soon as I get an HD cable that connects the phone and the TV).

This in no way takes the place of my Canon  camera and lenses.  I have quite a bit more control with my Canon equipment than I do with my Droid X, but for a point and shoot camera, I can be sure to get a high quality image when I don't have my Canon with me.  I just have to be aware of its limitations, but for a phone, it can take some really nice pictures at a moments notice.