Friday (11-May-2012) — New Jersey

Springtime Nature in New Jersey.

I stopped by the nearby Sourland Mountain Preserve on the way home from work to see what is new this spring. I was mainly looking for wildflowers and butterflies. One of the first things I found was hundreds, if not thousands of tadpoles at the edge of the pond. In a few weeks there are going to be a lot of frogs!

Tadpoles -- The Frogs Will Be Coming. Pond at Sourlands Mountain Nature Preserve in New Jersey. Image taken with a Nikon V1 and 85 mm f/1.4G lens and FT1 adapter. (ISO 100, 85 mm, f/5, 1/250 sec). FOV equiv to 230 mm on a 35 mm full frame camera. (David J Mathre)
Tadpoles — The Frogs Will Be Coming. Pond at the Sourland Mountain Preserve in New Jersey. Image taken with a Nikon V1 and 85 mm f/1.4G lens and FT1 adapter. (ISO 100, 85 mm, f/5, 1/250 sec). FOV equiv to 230 mm on a 35 mm full frame camera. (David J Mathre)

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Tuesday (27-March-2012) — New Jersey

Early Spring Night Sky over New Jersey. NASA ATREX Mission. Early Morning Sky Lit Up By Five NASA Sounding Rockets.

Early this morning NASA launched five sounding rockets from Wallops Island, Virginia over a seven minute period to study the jet stream in the upper atmosphere at the edge of space. Once the rockets reached the thermosphere they were set to release trimethyaluminum that would react to create a cloud of aluminum oxide. This mission has been canceled several times waiting for clear skies from New Jersey to South Carolina. I set up a Nikon D3x camera with a 14-24 mm f/2.8 wide angle lens and pointed it south-east to capture an image every minute starting just after midnight to see if I could to catch something from the mission. The rockets were launched starting just before 5 AM (EDT).

The following is a composite of 40 images combined using the startrails program showing the release from all 5 rockets. You see the star trails, a couple of jet trails, all five of the ATREX rocket cloud releases and as a bonus a meteor trail.

NASA ATREX Jet Stream Study Lights up The Night Sky. Composite of 40 images taken with a Nikon D3x and 14-24 mm f/2.8 lens (ISO 100, 14 mm, f/2.8, 59 sec) processed using DxO Pro, and Startrails. (David J Mathre)
NASA ATREX Jet Stream Study Lights up The Night Sky. Composite of 40 images taken with a Nikon D3x and 14-24 mm f/2.8 lens (ISO 100, 14 mm, f/2.8, 59 sec) processed using DxO Pro, and Startrails. (David J Mathre)

Monday (19-March-2012) — New Jersey

Late-Winter Indoor Nature in New Jersey. Stink Bug.

I have gone the entire winter and only saw a couple of Stink Bugs in the house. So tonight, while cooking dinner this Stink Bug decided to become a target while I was cooking dinner.

Just wondering if anyone is viewing my “Image of the Day” photo blog”. I have not posted anything for the last month, and didn’t get any feedback wondering where I was or if there would be more posts. The blog has been getting 20-40 spam messages a day to older posts, which I do not pass forward. At the same time, I have been posting images almost every day to Google+, mainly to various “Daily Photography Themes“. For these posts, I get many pluses (+) and comments. I am trying to figure out if there is a real audience to “My Image of the Day” photo blog. Please comment either to this blog or by e-mail.

Stink Bug, Indoor Winter Nature in New Jersey. Image taken with a Nikon D3x and 105 mm f/2.8 VR lens (ISO 100, 105 mm, f/22, 1/60 sec) using a ring flash. (David J Mathre)
Stink Bug, Indoor Winter Nature in New Jersey. Image taken with a Nikon D3x and 105 mm f/2.8 VR lens (ISO 100, 105 mm, f/22, 1/60 sec) using a ring flash. (David J Mathre)