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spg21212.bsky.social
Sandpiper
@spg21212.bsky.social
340 followers 610 following 240 posts
Editor. Science writer. Astronomer. Birder.
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spg21212.bsky.social
Today's sun image, dedicated to the memory of Mr. Eclipse, Fred Espenak. RIP.

#astrophotography
An orange disk, darker along the edges. There are two clusters opf dark spots on the right. Those are sunspots.
June 2, 2025 at 4:37 PM
spg21212.bsky.social
Spiral galaxy Messier 101 is about 21 million light years away, located in the constellation Ursa Major. It has about one trillion stars (1 with 12 zeros), and is almost 3 times the width of the Milky Way. This image was taken with a Nikon mirrorless camera and telephoto lens. #astrophotography
A nebulous white spiral, with some brighter areas and a bright center. The spiral is not symmetrical due to gravitational interactions with nearby companion galaxies (not visible in the image). The background is black and studded with faint foreground stars.
April 28, 2025 at 4:03 PM
spg21212.bsky.social
Fantastic! I would love to meet those beauties someday. Just for fun, here are my Limulus photos from last May. Slaughter Beach in Delaware, US. 😀
More than 40 horseshoe crabs spawning on a beach. They have a round dark olive-green carapace with a long dark tail. Some have barnacles and slipper shells growing on the carapace. There are some patches of green on the beach which are their tiny green eggs.
April 24, 2025 at 1:16 PM
spg21212.bsky.social
LOL! True. And it is fun to compare. I made this silly comparison of the Cone Nebula a couple of years ago: Hubble vs. my Nikon/telephoto lens.
Two photos of the Cone Nebula. One taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. The other by a Nikon camera with 560 mm focal length lens. Both images show a cone-shaped object with a flat top.
April 13, 2025 at 1:28 AM
spg21212.bsky.social
The Leo triplet: Messier 65 (top right), Messier 66 (bottom right), and NGC 3628 (left), at 35, 31, and 35 million light years away, respectively. 10 hours total exposure, over 4 nights, from a Bortle 7 site.

Nikon Z6II, Nikkor 400 mm with 1.4x teleconverter.
#Astrophotography
Three small galaxies in a triangle against a black backdrop of stars.
April 3, 2025 at 3:43 PM
spg21212.bsky.social
Squirrel!
(Also pretty much describes my attention span.)
A grey squirrel, its bushy tail facing the camera, holds two peanuts in its mouth. It is poised to jump off a platform bird feeder.
March 30, 2025 at 6:29 PM
spg21212.bsky.social
Here's a few seconds of respite from the chaos around us.

The spiral galaxy is Messier 81 (11.6 million light years away), and the little one is Messier 82 (12 million light years away). They were photographed from my backyard with a Nikon, telephoto lens, and star tracker. #astrophotograpy
Two galaxies. The left galaxy (Messier 82) is shaped like a cigar with a bit of dark wisps in the middle. The right galaxy (Messier 81) is a nebulous spiral showing two main wispy arms emerging from a bright center.
February 27, 2025 at 5:52 PM
spg21212.bsky.social
A red knot, photographed on May 22, 2024, at Slaughter Beach, Delaware, USA.
#waderwednesday #birds
A bird walking on a muddy beach. It has a light orange-red breast. Its feathers are mottled dark brown, black and white. The front of its face is light orange-red, and the back of the neck is subtly speckled black and white. It was a medium length bill
February 19, 2025 at 9:06 PM
spg21212.bsky.social
February 16, 2025 at 8:54 PM
spg21212.bsky.social
Luckovich posted this letter he got on X.
February 16, 2025 at 8:54 PM
spg21212.bsky.social
Well, our federally funded organization was just told to take down any DEIA displays in our offices, like pride flags.

Meanwhile, a nice astronomer gave us this Hubble spectrum of HD 233622a, variable type B2V E star. Science displays are still allowed. 🏳️‍🌈 🔭
A star's spectrum taken by Hubble spectrographs rended as a rainbow of blue, green, yellow, orange, and red.
February 12, 2025 at 6:12 PM
spg21212.bsky.social
This red-shouldered hawk could not find anything to eat at the bird feeder today. #birds #Maryland
A hawk perched on a pole holding a bird feeder. The hawk has a brownish-red head. Its chest and front is streaked in both vertical and horizontal brownish-red bars.It has black and white bands on its tail and wings.
February 9, 2025 at 3:43 AM
spg21212.bsky.social
This remarkable dinosaur-like bird -- taking a stroll along a beach/mudflats off the Straits of Malacca, Selangor, Malaysia -- is a lesser adjutant. it's almost 4 feet tall! #birds #birding
A tall stork-like bird with long legs. It has a thick long pointed bill, a yellow neck. The top feathers of its body are black with a red lining along the wing. The bird's underparts are white.
January 26, 2025 at 11:05 PM
spg21212.bsky.social
A first for me ... birding by Ring camera! At 4 am on Halloween morning, I got a Ring door alert at the back door. Whooooo are you?

Most people in my local FB birding community think it's an eastern screech-owl. A few of us wonder if it is a northern saw-whet owl. Location: central Maryland, USA.
A little owl with huge eyes staring at the camera. It has a few streaks on its breast. This is a black and white image taken at night with a security camera.
November 13, 2024 at 1:01 AM
spg21212.bsky.social
I was delighted to encounter this blue grosbeak feeding on grass seed by the roadside. Seen at Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge on May 8, 2024. #birds
A dark blue bird with rufous and black wings, standing on grass stems, surrounded by grass seed heads.
May 14, 2024 at 2:24 PM
spg21212.bsky.social
A lovely least sandpiper, seen at Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge in Delaware, on May 8. #shorebirds
Brown and white bird with white belly, feeding on mud.
May 14, 2024 at 2:22 PM
spg21212.bsky.social
Here are some #shorebirds I saw in Galveston, TX in mid-April. snowy plover, Wilson's plover, whimbrel, Am. avocet, . More photos posted here: flickr.com/photos/shire...
A small bird on the beach, light brown-grey on top, white below. A small bird on mudflats, brownish on top, white below, brown markings around neck. Small bird in grass, mottled dark and light brown feathers, a long decurved bill. A small bird with long legs in shallow water, black and white back, rust-colored head and neck, with a long upturned bill.
May 7, 2024 at 9:21 PM
spg21212.bsky.social
The Rosetta Nebula in Monoceros, a cloud of mostly hydrogen gas with a nearby cluster of newly formed stars. (Nikon Z6II, Nikkor 400 mm, 9.5h exposure time in 3m subexposures. Processed with Siril, GIMP, Starnet++, and Topaz De-noise.) From my Bortle 7 backyard near Baltimore. #astrophotography
February 24, 2024 at 1:10 AM
spg21212.bsky.social
I’m stuck at the Subaru dealership due to car repairs. So I used that time to process some images I took last night, Here’s my first attempt at Pleiades. Coincidentally, its Japanese name is Subaru!

Gear: Nikon Z6II, Nikkor lens 400mm with 1.4 teleconverter (560 mm), Star Adventurer GTI tracker.
November 8, 2023 at 8:03 PM
spg21212.bsky.social
Just getting started in astrophotography from my backyard in Baltimore! Here's the Andromeda galaxy (Messier 31) on Nov 3 '23. Gear used: Nikon Z6II, Tamron 150-600 mm at 300 mm, ISO 800, total 20 min. exposure time; Tracking: SA GTI; Controller: ASIAir Mini; Processed in Siril and Gimp.
A long oval nebulous white shape which is bright in the center and has wispy spiral arms emanating from the center. It appears in a black backdrop peppered with white points that are stars.
November 6, 2023 at 2:38 AM
spg21212.bsky.social
A look at the sun today. Lots of cool little sunspot clusters.

Nikon Z6ii, Nikkor 400mm w/ 1.4x extender (560mm), 1/160 s, ISO 200,. f/7.1, Thousand Oaks white light filter. A little sharpening to enhance sunspot features
The sun appears as an orange ball. There are a few darker small brownish-orange spots on it. Some of the spots are in clusters A section of the sun showing a close-up of sunspots. The image is mostly orange with a few brownish-orange spots. A few of the spots are in clusters.
October 2, 2023 at 6:21 PM
spg21212.bsky.social
Back in mid-May 2023, I met this lovely short-billed dowitcher at Oyster Rocks Road, Delaware.
A medium-sized shorebird, mostly brown with white and some rust coloring, with a long bill. It is in a wetlands habitat walking in mud near water with grasses in the background.
October 1, 2023 at 2:39 AM
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I was so excited to observe this banded red knot at Slaughter Beach, Delaware, on May 22, ’23. According to a shorebird scientist friend, this bird was banded in Río Grande, Tierra del Fuego, on 8 Nov 2007 as an adult! She is at least 18 years old!
A pudgy mottled brownish shorebird with rust-colored breast and neck, and medium-length bill, walking on a beach with many pebbles. The bird has two orange bands on its feet, one of which has a code that reads "c9V." It is surrounded by other smaller shorebirds.
September 20, 2023 at 3:50 PM
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My first ever western sandpiper, identified by photo. This juvenile was seen at Slaughter Beach, Delaware, on September 15, hanging out with a lot of semipalmated sandpipers.
A mostly brown and white shorebird with a longish bill feeding on a muddy stretch of beach.
September 19, 2023 at 4:04 PM