Cap'n Bob & the Damsel

May 9, 2016 Transit of Mercury

My efforts to photograph the Mercurial transit of the sun today were less than optimum; the diminutive disk of the small planet did not resolve well with my Canon SL1, 300mm lens and a $10 solar filter. Moreover, looking at the sun through Eclipse Shades was a bust; you couldn’t resolve the planet at all.

But, all was not lost – thanks to the Solar Dynamics Observatory’s images on the internet, I captured several screen shots to combine into the animation below. The sequence starts when Mercury is almost at mid-transit (I did not want to get up at 4 AM) and continues to the point where the shadow is barely touching the east limb of the sun. I find it very interesting that the sunspots at and above the equator move to indicate the solar rotation over the few hours it took for the transit.


09 May 2016 by Aerospace Astronomy Rocket Science

Saguaro Flower Season

Saguaro Flower and Buds

This image (click to enlarge) is of the top of a saguaro 400 feet down the road from our little house in the desert. This particular cactus doesn’t have any “arms” like a lot of them do, but it has an abundance of flower buds on its crown and the one lovely open flower. There will be many more, as you can see.

We will be posting lots of flower pictures as the spring/summer flowering season progresses. We love our desert and the seasonal delights it provides.

05 May 2016 by Arizona Environment Flowers Photography

Hoot Owl Cactus

Hoot Owl Cactus

I don’t know the exact type of cactus this is, but I think it is probably in the cereus family. The little guy’s first four flowers opened up today and the configuration of the flowers reminded me of a couple of hoot owls staring.

There is another flower bud that will probably open up after the hoot owl effect goes away. Click on the image to enlarge.

04 May 2016 by Arizona Home & Garden Photography

A New GPS for the RV

New Garmin GPS

I have had the little Garmin Nüvi 205W GPS since July of 2009. Once understanding its limitations, it turned out to be a reliable gadget in our old Denali SUV.

We bought our Ford F-150, which had a built-in navigation system so we retired the 205 to the office shelf. When we bought the Roadrunner, our Georgetown 30X3 32 foot motorhome, I resurrected the 205W and have been using it in the RV when we travel.

The old GPS has only a four inch display which, in the larger dimensions of the RV, could be hard to read from the captain’s chair. I decided that if Garmin were to have a larger format GPS, then we would need to get it to overcome the display size issue. An Amazon query turned up this nice Garmin Nüvi 2797 with lifetime map updates and a traffic report receiver. The price was within budget, so I ordered it.

The GPS showed up yesterday and I have been getting acquainted with the unit which, fortunately, is similar enough to the old unit that familiarization has gone quite fast. The new features (traffic, bluetooth, etc.) will eventually come into focus as well.

The best thing is that the larger display will be MUCH easier to read while seated in the captain’s chair and underway in the Roadrunner. We will not have the opportunity to use it until toward Memorial Day or after since our May is sort of booked up with caduceus-oriented appointments.

30 Apr 2016 by Technobabble Travel

My Good Deed for Today

Curve Billed Thrasher

Damsel and I did some yard chores this morning consisting of clean-up of a pile of cut-down bush branches we left for “later” a couple of weeks ago. We finished that and moved on to pruning some low-hanging foliage on the “Musical” mesquite tree out front. We also pruned some “suckers” from the citrus “orchard” (one orange, one lemon tree).

Later in the day, I was out by the orchard 😉 and spotted a young Curve Billed Thrasher that was caught in a net that Damsel has covering her little orange tree. The net was placed there precisely to keep critters out, but somehow, this little guy found his way in and tangled itself in the mesh.

I had my camera with me, but placed it on the ground to effect a release of the bird if I could, therefore no pix of the rescue, just the one above of a similar bird at our feeder I took earlier.

I reached under the net and got a grip on the bird; it didn’t like me doing so and squawked the whole time I gently held it while getting out my Sog knife to cut through some of the entangled netting. After a minute or so, I managed to free the bird which had minimal injury as far as I could tell. It flew a low trajectory to a nearby cholla where it perched.

I’m glad I found the little guy before one of the local predators did. Damsel and I discussed replacing the net with some wire screen mesh which is less likely to snare the critters.

27 Apr 2016 by Arizona Critters Home & Garden Photography

Yellow Palo Verde in Bloom

Yellow Palo Verde

This is the time of year that this little yellow palo verde tree on the road out front gets its tiny flowers (see inset). The bees love to browse these and you can hear them buzzing during the day when passing by the tree.

This little tree is one that was already growing here when we had the house built. There was a cat’s paw right next to the tree originally, but we had the landscapers remove it since it was encroaching and causing the little tree to lean over. Since that time, we have been pruning the tree to encourage it to fill out on the side where the other tree was.

This tree will probably continue to be in bloom until late May when the heat starts to come back to our desert. Click on the image to enlarge.

26 Apr 2016 by Arizona Flowers Home & Garden Photography

Joshua Tree Slideshow


This is a slideshow of a few of the photos that Damsel took of Joshua Tree National Park as we drove through on Friday. It was a fairly hasty pass-through since we had to be in Palm Desert (where we are now) fairly early.

When I went to post this slideshow, I had difficulty connecting to the file server with the FTP program I generally use to upload the Javascript embedded in PHP control file. I did, however, find a backdoor method using the host’s file manager via the browser. It’s not the method I’m used to using, but I figured it out and voila! The slideshow is on-line.

There are six images in the slideshow. As you can see, it was an excellent day for a drive through this beautiful National Park. Click on an image to advance to the next.

24 Apr 2016 by California Environment Photography Wanderlust

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