Mars shows due East at 8 PM.
I was thinking it was still behind the sun yet.

A tip for taking star photos - it can be better to take several short shots and use one of the stacking tools that are available than one long shot. Some of these tools will allow you to have a nicely exposed foreground, and a really "stars on black" sky without the trails that you get with long exposures.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

A tip for taking star photos - it can be better to take several short shots and use one of the stacking tools that are available than one long shot. Some of these tools will allow you to have a nicely exposed foreground, and a really "stars on black" sky without the trails that you get with long exposures.

Those two pictures of mine are raw 1 second and 5 second exposures from around 11 pm. What are the "stacking tools"?

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The mind is a weird and mysterious place

Applications that stack photos in various ways - some will create clean star trails, others will stack lots of pictures on top of each other, while keeping the background black.
Search for "star stacking software" or "star stacking applications", one I use is "starstacker", but there are several others.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Gnu what is the time between shots on the time laps?

Never mind it's every 10 seconds.

I really enjoyed the second one with its developing star trail

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

There is a lining up of Venus and Jupiter this week. The two in the photo may be them. They are spreading apart now, but they were quite close together.

Steve

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Warning, addicted to SETI crunching!
Crunching as a member of GPU Users Group.
GPUUG Website

The bottom star you circled is Betelgeuse. Now if you follow that line the other way you will find Sirius.

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My neighbor (across the street) has had two chickens that he doesn't didn't pay much attention to. I have no idea what he was feeding them or if he was feeding them. One day I gave them a treat - some dried mealworms that I had for feeding wild birds. Ever since then the chickens have been spending a lot of time in my yard. The more time they spent here, the more inclined I was to give them something to eat. (Didn't want them to go hungry.) I gave them wild bird seed and, occasionally, a piece of white bread. Then they discovered the dry cat food I put on the front porch to feed the feral cats. (Had to stop putting cat food out until after dark.)

Now I wake up and they are in my front yard. Eventually they come into my back yard. I've gone out and bought proper chicken food for them, which isn't much different than the wild bird food. I have no idea when the last time was that they went back across the street to their home.

I have adopted them. I have named them Thelma and Louise. I sent a text to my neighbor asking if he'd like to sell them. He clearly has little or no invested time or effort in having or raising chickens. I haven't heard back. I get a little "do not disturb" moon symbol when I send him a text, so I suppose he's not even getting them. (I don't know how or why a text would have that moon symbol, so I'm assuming.)

Please don't send cooking instructions. I've heard it all. :-(

Eating mealworms.


Begging for mealworms. :-( Thelma is in front. Louise is in back. Thelma is the Alpha bird.


Just looking for bugs and seeds, I guess.

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~Sue~

Nice chicks:)
Memories comes back picking very fresh eggs from them.
Yes. Very fresh, still warm and with the shell still soft.

Free Range Chicken? You might want to find out where they are nesting. Winter is closing in. Don't know if you have a good sheltered area for the chickens. I have seen someone use a 55 gallon drum lined with straw as a outside home.

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Free Range Chicken? You might want to find out where they are nesting. Winter is closing in. Don't know if you have a good sheltered area for the chickens. I have seen someone use a 55 gallon drum lined with straw as a outside home.

I have a smallish dog house and I put some pine shavings inside, but yesterday they left my back yard near sunset and went across the street to the neighbor's house. (He technically owns them.) I suppose that location imprinted on them when they were young. I think the only way to get them to stay in my yard overnight would be to lock them in a coop. I can't do that because that would (technically) be kidnapping (or birdnapping). I'm sort of on the horns of a dilemma. Sure wish the neighbor would sell (or give) them to me so I could invest some money into a proper coop. No reason to do that if I don't own them.

I believe they are spending their nights under a Japanese boxwood hedge across the street. I don't know if they're going back into their owner's back yard or not. I'd have to sit outside and watch. I may do that.

I have a shed in the back yard that I don't really use. I also got some nesting boxes. I'm thinking about putting the nesting boxes up on the shelf (about 4 feet high) in the shed and making that a place for them to spend the night. And I'd have to devise some sort of ladder for them to climb up to the shelf. Again, I don't know if they'll comply due to their going "home" in the evening.

I have found out that these are Rhode Island Reds.

Edit:

Speaking of winter; first, I'm in central Texas. Never much of a real "winter" down here; second, I've checked into a website with a forum - site is called Backyard Chickens. There they say it's not really necessary to protect chickens from what would be normal cold (snow and ice) weather conditions since these birds have been around long enough to have been exposed to all sorts of weather without benefit of human-produced heat and electricity. It's only necessary to give them a little shelter, feed them normally, and make sure they have access to unfrozen water.

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~Sue~

A few recent shots around the marina after dark....

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Those are very nice Rob.

Those are very nice Rob.

+1

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Its always had a narrow jetty alongside. The wide walkway is just visible in the second shot. I've been moored "head in" for some time, it's easier getting in when it's windy, and the access to the front cabin is far easier than climbing over the engine covers etc.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

First I saw this:



Then I saw this:



Thelma has been a busy girl! Louise hasn't started laying eggs yet, or she has but they're hidden.

The nest is right outside my "office" window.

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~Sue~

That's unless they might be using the same nest to lay the eggs.

That's unless they might be using the same nest to lay the eggs.

Do they do that? I'll have to check.

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~Sue~

Oh yes all the time, when in the hen house they take and empty nest and jump in and lay their eggs.

Then you have some we called Cluks which they quit laying and go sit on any eggs thinking they are going to hatch them. They get file thirteen treatment in short order. They will never lay again.

It's real easy to tell if they are done we called the three finger test, if you can put 3 fingers between the bones in the back end they are laying still but when are done it closes up to 2 fingers wide.