August 10th, 2008 Grizzly Bears

The Minnesota Zoo is just 15 minutes away, about 12 miles. We have been members for most of the last 10 years or so with very few lapses in between. We hit it often in the winter when many of the animals are much more active while the visitors to the zoo is sadly almost nill outside. In any event, it makes it easy to head over to the zoo for a specific task for a short period of time. The new Grizzly’s merit some serious work. Today I hit the 10am training, I have been told a couple times now that the Grizzly’s are most active during the training (and before or just after) and again in the evening, otherwise like many of the other animals at the zoo in the summer they mostly lay around all day. Hoping to make it for opening I was late, I hit the zoo parking lot around 9:30 and made it to the grizzly’s by 9:35 (membership has it’s privileges). The bears were relaxing, while some would sleep in the sun, now and then they would burro a hole in order to reach the cooler damp sand to lie in.

Daily training began promptly at 10am. The bear’s are not yet full grown, training is in it’s very basic stages and is voluntary, Sadie decided not to participate today.

Sadie immediately after training ended did some exploring.

I kind of like this zoo thing, Grizzly bears are dangerous and have been attributed to the deaths of 25 people in North America since 2000 including Timothy Treadwell in 2003. Sure I have to shoot through glass but, at least I don’t have to carry a rifle (/pepper spray).

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August 10th, 2008 Marjorie McNeely Conservatory Water Lilies »« August 9th, 2008 MN Zoo Bird Show

August 9th, 2008 MN Zoo Bird Show

Another Zoo trip hoping to get some good Grizzly captures. Next time I am going to hit the zoo at 9am at opening and around 3pm to close. I was told they have a training around 10am and after that they sleep most of the day until the afternoon. I got some nice tiger, moose, camel, pig and a few other photos but, also took in the bird show. The show began by a brief introduction then introducing a member of the audience who went on to get down on his knees and propose.

She said yes

The family photographer got caught up in the moment so after the show I congratulated them and offered them the originals no strings attached (I took 40+ high resolution photos shot RAW not the little ones like these), hopefully they contact me.

The show was pretty good, I was waiting for the Eagle which they bring out last. Highlights were an albino red tailed hawk. Now for some reason this was not the one I wanted to upload the one I was going to upload actually shows his tail which has a hint of red in it.

Some of the birds screamed above the heads of spectators which made for some good shots.

One flew over the lucky couple on his way to snatch a dollar bill out of a guys hands .

This was some type of rare bird that I did not catch the name of, only 200 or so left in existence.

Then the star of the show the Eagle.

Just as an edit the highlight of the show was the proposal, the audience was clearly touched.

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August 10th, 2008 Grizzly Bears »« August 3, 2008 Chase MN

August 3, 2008 Chase MN

The storm prediction center had us under a 5% Tornado Risk (and still does at the time of this writing). I headed to SW MN eventually winding up in Mountain Lake, MN just East of Windom, just North of the warm front. The area had impressive dew points in the high 70′s between Windom and St. James along with an unbreakable cap. I spent the time with Tim Purington, and Andy Gabrielson while MD 2013 came and went without any warnings being issued. I had been staring at something about a telephone museum, so just before leaving I went over and checked it out. It’s Heritage Village at Mountain Lake. A fitting bust photo for the day. It looked like a cool little place but, they were closed at the time so I just shot a few quick photos out the drivers side window with the SD1000 not wanting to pull out the SLR. I had a nice sunset shot lined up in back of an old grain elevator/co-op but, the sun set into some clouds just before I got into position.

On the way out of the parking lot to ‘Heritage Village’ I ran into John Wetter, then later Andrew Revering on they way out of ‘Heritage Village’. I went East to St. James stopping for gas and a bottle of water. Tim and Andy G were at the Citgo(?) and they noticed initiation in Renville County(big towers, granted they had difficulties getting going at first). They shot North, I headed up 169 eventually heading North through Nicollet to Norwood then home. During this time MD 2019 was issued resulting in Tornado Watch #804 effective until 6am (the night is not over but, I am going to bed). Once I got to Norwood it was pretty dark I pulled through the DQ for two chili dog’s watching some of the lightning off in the distance, I went home. I left home around 4pm returning at 10:30, total distance was 433km.

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August 9th, 2008 MN Zoo Bird Show »« August 1-2, 2008 MAS Campout with the Stars

August 1-2, 2008 MAS Campout with the Stars

The Minnesota Astronomical Society along with REI and Astronomy Magazine present ‘Campout with the Stars‘. Onan Observatory is located at Baylor Regional Park & Campground in Carver County, slightly light polluted about 45 miles from Minneapolis with a few light domes it’s a great place close to the metro for some decent astronomy without having to drive 5 hours for dark sky’s. Quite a few tents were setup on the soccer field below as well as some pop-up’s near the tennis courts (versus the actual campground which I did’nt actually visit). I signed up to volunteer at Onan but, brought a 10″ dobsonian telescope to help split the crowds. I arrived a little past 8pm having mentioned I would be late, quite a few MAS members had quite a selection of scopes setup, lot’s of dobs including Onan’s 20″ Obsession setup outside as well. Quite a crowd of people when I first arrived it took 20 minutes to setup, the telescope required collimation and I in preparation for mounting encoders I replaced the Teflon in the rocker box which made things a little too slippery (the scope needs a little bit of friction or it will not stay put when you point it at something). During twilight I had the scope pointed a Jupiter it was pretty crowded, lots of people including lots of kids. As the stars begun coming out many of the kids suddenly disappeared, many of the campers had gone to bed but, things remained pretty busy through 11pm, around 12pm pretty much all of the campers were sleeping, so I went to work checking out others setups, scopes, and views of different objects. I saw quite a few objects, 2 decent ISS passes, a few iridium flares, galaxies, nebulas, globulars, etc. Around 1am I grabbed the camera and started taking widefield’s, my fastest, widest angle lens was a 28mm f/2.8, I should have brought a film camera for it’s full frame but, I grabbed the Rebel Xt with it’s 1.7 crop factor. Sagittarius (central bulge, galactic center of our galaxy & home of one or more super-massive black hole’s) had a bit of a Jupiter problem it’s soo bright I was afraid it would be way too blown out so I went a little higher in the ‘Milky Way’ to Aquila the bright star is Altair.

Not bad, not soo good, a full frame exposure with the 28mm f2.8 (widest/fastest I have) would have yielded a much larger field with less visible trailing. I took a single exposure of Onan, I should have popped on a 17mm and taken a shot from much further away as well as action shots from earlier in the day, tonight won’t have as many telescopes setup due to the weather forecast.

Around 1:30 or so? the dew kicked and not having a dew controller (another case with battery) I packed up and left.

Edit: August 2nd, 2008

No widefields this evening no photos, saw many more meteors (very active), when I arrived it was pretty cloudy but, cleared slowly. We began observing thru hole’s in the sky, I did’nt have a computerized scope and without a fairly decent patch of sky it’s significantly more difficult to find different objects. Lot’s of kids up front looked at Jupiter between clouds during twilight. Eventually everything cleared and found a couple dozen globular’s, galaxies, nebula’s, and open clusters working Sagittarius for about half the objects and the rest of the sky for the other half. Seeing became pretty bad around midnight, left around 2am. Our guests had maybe 70 tent’s setup on the soccer field, we had a couple pop-up’s, and tents and a couple people slept in the observatory (4 bunks, heated).

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August 3, 2008 Chase MN »« July 31st, 2008 Chase MN/IA