A recent fall?

Some of these petrified trees look like they fell within the last decade, not 225 million years ago! This image was taken at 24mm focal length with an exposure of 1/200 seconds at f/8, ISO 400.

Of snow and petrified wood

Some areas of the Petrified Forest National Park are literally covered in petrified wood. This image was taken at 24mm focal length with an exposure of 1/320 seconds at f/8, ISO 400.

Petrified tree rings?

You can almost count the tree rings on these petrified logs! It's amazing to wonder what the planet would have been like when these trees were alive. It was early in the age of dinosaurs, about 220 to 225 million years ago. The supercontinent of Pangaea was just starting to break up into present day continents. And northern Arizona was a balmy jungle like climate sitting a few thousand miles southeast of its present location, much closer to the equator. North and South America had just separated from Africa. This image was taken at 24mm focal length with an exposure of 1/250 seconds at f/8, ISO 400.

The Crystal Forest

In what could almost be a lunar landscape, petrified trees lie all over the landscape. This iamge was taken at 24mm focal length with an exposure of 1/320 seconds at f/8, ISO 400.

Painted Desert to Petrified Forest

The Painted Desert and Petrified Forest National Parks are part of a common geological setting. One can see petrified wood from the viewpoints along the loop road that curves north of Interstate 40 through the Painted Desert before turning west and then south across the interstate and to the main section where the Petrified Forest takes over. And where the petrified wood is very visible, it is against the backdrop of the Painted Desert landscape. Here is a view of some fantastic layered geology just before getting to the most prolific displays of petrified wood along the loop road south of I-40. This image was taken with my 24mm lens with an exposure of 1/1250 seconds at f/8, ISO 400.

Newspaper Rock

The Newspaper Rock Petroglyphs are aptly named - the face of this rock laying at the base of a small cliff is literally covered in Petroglyphs. Newspaper Rock is not far from Puerco Pueblo, another site with lots of Petroglyphs in the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest (see my blog entries on December 21 titled Puerco Pueblo Petroglyphs and Petroglyph Closeup). This image was taken at 168mm focal length with an exposure of 1/125 seconds at f/8, ISO 400.

Puerco Pueblo ruins

Here is a segment of the Puerco Pueblo ruins that has not be excavated. You can make out the general shape of a straight wall in the rocky rubble in the middle of the frame. It is fascinating to be able to recognize such structures and imagine what it might have been like to inhabit this area when it was active. Of course, I prefer the modern conveniences of indoor plumbing and electricity, not to mention the store down the street where I buy most of my food..... This image was taken at 24mm focal length with an exposure of 1/640 seconds at f/8, ISO 400.

Puerco Pueblo Ruins

These are some of the ruins at Puerco Pueblo in the Painted Desert & Petrified Forest National Park. This section of the ruins was reconstructed by archeologists. Most of the ruins are still buried and only surveyed for their position and can be spotted if you know what to look for. This image was taken with my 24mm lens with an exposure of 1/250 seconds at f/8, ISO 400.

Clouds and comet and dome

This image was taken on Wednesday morning and shows comet Holmes which has continued to stay bright while it expands - if you could condense all the light from the comet back into a point, it would still be one of the brightest objects in this section of sky. The comet is just left of center. The Spacewatch 36 inch dome is in the foreground with a bank of clouds that are slowly moving into the area. This image was taken with my 24mm f/1.8 lens with an exposure of 30 seconds at ISO 400.

Petroglyph closeup

Here's a closer view of the angled petroglyph, just left of center. This image was taken at 300mm focal length with an exposure of 1/125 seconds at f/8, ISO 400.

Puerco Pueblo Petroglyphs

The Puerco Pueblo in the Painted Desert/Petrified Forest National Park is a site of ancient ruins as well as a large collection of Petroglyphs including these. If you examine the petroglyphs on this rock, most of them are vertical, however, just below the light layer in the rock is a four legged creature which is angled perpendicular to the natural layering in the rock, suggesting that it predates the other petroglyphs to a time when the rock sat with the layering parallel to the ground. This image was taken at 133mm focal length with an exposure of 1/250 seconds at f/8, ISO 400.

Hills and more Hills

There are hills and more hills in this shot. You can see the complex geology written in the layers of these hills in the Painted Desert. This image was taken at 214mm foca length with an exposure of 1/1800 seconds at f/8, ISO 400.

Painted Desert

This telephoto shot across the Painted Desert shows the distant hills on the Navajo Reservation on the horizon as well as the complex and crumbling landsacape on the nearer Painted Desert. This image was taken at 214mm focal length with an exposure of 1/1800 seconds at f/8, ISO 400.

Painted Desert

Another view of the Painted Desert. This imge was taken at 70mm focal length with an exposure of 1/400 seconds at f/8, ISO 100.

Tiponi Point, Painted Desert

My sweetie enjoys the view from Tiponi Point along the Painted Desert loop road. This image was taken at 18mm focal length with an exposure of 1/400 at f/8, ISO 100.

Snow covered Painted Desert

We were away for the weekend in northeast Arizona for a teachers workshop which my wife helped run. On the way back home, we spend Sunday at the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest National Park, following a loop road through beautiful sno covered views of the Painted Desert such as this one as well as archeological sites and fields of petrified wood. Here, you can see the spectacular colors of the Painted Desert partly masked by snow from last weeks stormy weather. This image was taken with my 24mm lens with an exposure of 1/1000 seconds at f/11, ISO 400.

Baboquivari Sunset

Driving up to Kitt Peak on Wednesday afternoon, I broke out of a cloud layer and drove into some snow cover. Finally, I was presented this great view of Baboquivari to the south of Kitt Peak with snow in the hills in the foreground and clouds around the hills as well. This iamge was taken at 35mm focal length with an expsoure of 1/320 seconds at f/5.6, ISO 400.

Domes and domes

These "Astro Haven" domes are occupied by various telescopes that can be rented and remotely operated. These domes remind me of spacesuit helmets and open by rolling the segments over the top of the dome, giving the telescope protection from one direction from the wind. This image was taken at 38mm focal length with an exposure of 1/500 seconds at f/8, ISO 200 with a polarizer.

New Mexico Skies

This is the New Mexico Skies site near Cloudcroft New Mexico. A very nice couple runs this private observatory where telescopes sites are rented out and run remotely. This image was taken at 25mm focal length with an exposure of 1/500 seconds at f/8, ISO 200.

Business end of an F-1 engine

This would definitely be a view that you would not want to have at T-7 seconds during the launch of a Saturn V. This is the combustion chamber of the giant F-1 engine looking in through the nozzle of the engine. This image was taken at 34mm focal length with an exposure of 1/30 seconds at f/4.5, ISO 200.

F-1 engine details

Speaking of a plumbers nightmare.... These three parallel tubes carried oxydizer at high pressure, as well as helium and compressed gases. They each have labels which show the flow direction, pressure and what flows through them. Pretty cool - literally in the case of the oxydizer, namely liquid oxygen. This image was taken at 28mm focal length with an exposure of 1/160 seconds at f/4, ISO 200.

F-1 engine details

This is the top end of the F-1 engine centered roughly on the combustion chamber near the bottom. What a plumbers nightmare with pipes and tubes and pumps and all. Some of the next images will show some closeups that you might be able to place using this shot. Looking at the details of this engine was fascinating and included part numbers and parts with labels showing fuel or oxydizer flows. It's hard to imagine the complexity involved and also amazing that 13 sets of 5 of these engines performed flawlessly during their 13 Saturn V launches! This image was taken at 18mm focal length with an exposure of 1/250 seconds at f/3.5, ISO 200.

F-1 thrust sctructure

This is the thrust structure of the F-1 engine outside the New Mexico Museum of Space History. The engine produced 1.5 million pounds of thrust and had to transmit that thrust into the Saturn V rocket above it. The F-1 was also gimbaled, so that the thrust could be aimed to steer the vehicle as it flew into space. This image was taken at 18mm focal length with and exposure of 1/800 seconds at f/3.5, ISO 1600.

The Orion Nebula

The Orion Nebula, also known as M-42 is a bright and easy target that you can see with the unaided eye (though seeing it as more than just a little fuzzy is a challenge) and is a decent binocular and great small telescope target. This image was taken on my way back to survey regions after looking at 17P/Holmes. The image was taken at 190mm focal length with an exposure of 60 seconds at f/6.3, ISO 400. This image was cropped significantly from the full frame and a little stretching to bring out the faint outer nebula without blowing out the central region too much.

17P/Holmes

Comet 17P/Holmes is still putting on a good show. I mounted my camera on the front of our 36 inch Spacewatch Telescope again last night and took this image of the comet. The camera was in a spot I had lots of trouble getting to, so I had a devil of a time centering and checking focus, but I managed to get the focus right. I had to crop this image so that it appears more like an image with about a 500mm focal length since the comet ended up in the lower corner of my frame. Did I mention that the camera was mounted in a spot that I had trouble getting to? Oh, yeah, I did..... Anyway, the comet sits right next to the brightest star in Perseus - Alpha Perseus (Mirfak) which is to the upper left of the comet in this image. The comets nucleus is visible to the bottom right of the almost but not quite circular coma. To the upper left of the nucleus is a complex dust structure that is slowly blowing away from the comet, pushed by solar wind and if the image were deep enough, we would see a complex tail structure of fine dust and gas extending off the frame to the upper left. This image was taken at 190mm focal length with an exposure of 60 seconds at f/6.3, ISO 400.