Waterloo Mills Preserve in Chester County is a property owned by the Brandywine Conservancy. On 170 acres, the site contains an 18th century village, mill race remnants, wildflower meadows, fertile marshes, mature woods and over a mile of the upper reaches of Darby Creek. Members of the Brandywine Conservancy & Museum of Art can walk the trails through the property. Stepping stones and a puncheon log allow visitors to ford small streams and Darby Creek. The property offers a variety of wildlife ranging from whitetail deer to turtles to migratory birds, as well as many varieties of plants.
The village of Waterloo Mills, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, includes an old gristmill, a barn, a wheelwright and blacksmith’s shop, and two houses. Here are some views of the outdoor sections of the property.
A few of the old mill and farm buildings in the Historic District remain.
An interesting site along the Chester Valley Trail near Valley Forge is a great blue heron rookery. The site has been active now for several years, with birds arriving to nest in late February. The site is adjacent to two old quarries, and great blue herons can be seen flying over the nearby area.
The birds nest together in a colony.An overview of most of the site.
The grim winter weather continues in Chester County. I was able to get away on a Sunday to visit a few spots along French Creek.
Rapp’s Dam Covered bridge has been featured before on this blog. This bridge is a 105-foot-long (32 m), Burr truss bridge that was constructed in 1866 by Benjamin F. Hartman. It has fieldstone abutments, horizontal siding and boxed cornices with returns at its portals. It is one of three covered bridges that cross French Creek, the others being Hall’s Bridge and Kennedy Bridge. The Rapps Bridge was renovated in 1978 and again in 2011.
The bridge is adjacent to the French Creek Heritage Park which has picnic tables and access for the French Creek Trail.
Snyder’ s Mill also sits in the park. It was a linseed oil mill in the 1800s, and could be the graining mill of the 1775 Continental Powder Mill Complex. In recent years, Snyder’s Mill had been on the verge of total collapse. The East Pikeland Historical Commission has stabilized the mill and is working to promote the site as a heritage tourism destination.
A short distance upstream is the Hares Hill Road Bridge, a single-span, wrought iron, bowstring-shaped lattice girder bridge. It was built in 1869 by Moseley Iron Bridge and Roof Company and is the only known surviving example of this kind.
This building in the Kimberton area caught my attention.
Since I began learning how to do astrophotography post-processing over the past year or so, there as been a definite change for the better in the end results. I have put a few examples below. The differences are mainly down to taking an increased number of exposures per image and improvements in processing skills and software. Here are a few examples.
The Monkey Head Nebula . I had considered this one of my fairly good images.Monkey Head redux, this time in Hubble Palette using Veralux Alchemy script in Siril.The Rosette Nebula in RGB.The Rosette, also strangely in RGB. More processing time and better software to bring out more blue.The adorable Cocoon Nebula in RGB. I was probably was too light on the star stretching here.The Cocoon Nebula in Hubble Palette using the Veralux Alchemy script in Siril.
To see some truly awful astrophotography, you can go back to some of my early Hubble Challenge posts. You can find these posts by clicking on Hubble Challenge category link at the top of the page.
Here are some new astrophotography images taken with the Seestar S30 Pro. These images were processed with only the in-app software. These photos show the wide field capability of the scope. Mosaic mode was not used, and all were cropped to some extent.
IC 434, the Horsehead NebulaM 42. the Orion Nebula, with NGC 1981, the Coal Car Cluster.M 31, the Andromeda Galaxy with a short integration time.
The Hubble 35th Anniversary Challenge has been completed. You can read more about the challenge here on the Night Sky page. Although I did set out to complete the gold level, I managed to earn the Gold Certificate and pin. The pin was a bonus, as I didn’t realize there was one for this program.
As the weather continues to keep me indoors, I thought I’d post a few astrophotos taken with the Dwarf Mini smart telescope. Temps are on the rise, so I hope to get out this weekend to do some bird watching.
The Rosette Nebula in Monoceros. This is an RGB photo,The nearly full moon.
This winter has been particularly harsh, with prolonged periods of below average temperatures that have kept me trapped at home when the snow fails to melt around my car. I did, however, manage to travel to a farming area in northwestern Chester County to do some birding on New Year’s weekend.
This area is known for attracting winter migrant species that prefer open habitats, such as horned larks, Lapland longspurs, and snow buntings. I have had lucky seeing the horned larks before. This time, I saw the flocks of birds but had difficulty making out individuals with my binoculars or camera. However, a popular bird sound id app did pick up all of the species above, including the snow bunting and longspur. To access this site, one has to try to pull off by the side of the road and sit an wait. There was one other car during the time I was there. The locals must think we are crazy.
In terms of pictures, I had to content myself with scenes of the local area.
Gee, this farm looks familiar.Cows sheltering in the woods.
I made my way home via Marsh Creek State Park. Alas, the gull photos I took there were too distant and blurry.
A belated Christmas gift brought the redundantly named Dwarf Mini smart telescope my way. You can see more information about this scope here. I was interested in this telescope due to its extreme portability and the ability to get a wider field of view compared to my Seestar S50.
Weather here this Winter has been below average in temperature and overcast. When it does clear, it has been very cold and windy. Here are some sample photos I managed to get processed with only the Stellar Studio software in the Dwarflabs app. Most of these stellar objects here have been featured in this blog before. Total integration time for most targets was about 1-2 hours.
M31, the Andromeda GalaxyM45, the PleiadesM33, the Triangulum GalaxyC19, the Cocoon NebulaM44, the Beehive ClusterM35, the Shoe Buckle Cluster with NGC 2158 in the lower rightThe Eastern Veil Nebula in Cygnus
December marks the final month of the Hubble 35th Anniversary Challenge. More about the challenge can be found on the Night Sky page.
The first target is a familiar one – even to those who view the night sky with their naked eyes – the Pleiades, also known as Seven Sisters and Messier 45 (M45). It is an asterism of an open star cluster containing young B-type stars in the northwest of the constellation Taurus. At a distance of about 444 light-years, it is among the nearest star clusters to Earth and the nearest Messier object to Earth, being the most obvious star cluster to the naked eye in the night sky. It contains the reflection nebulae NGC 1432, an HII region, and NGC 1435, known as the Merope Nebula. Around 2330 BC the Pleiades marked the vernal point. Due to the brightness of its stars, the Pleiades is viewable from most areas on Earth, even in locations with significant light pollution.
The cluster is dominated by hot blue luminous stars that have formed within the last 100 million years. Reflection nebulae around the brightest stars were once thought to be leftover material from their formation, but are now considered likely to be an unrelated dust cloud in the interstellar medium through which the stars are currently passing. Computer simulations have shown that the Pleiades were probably formed from a compact configuration that once resembled the Orion Nebula.
Together with the open star cluster of the Hyades, the Pleiades form the Golden Gate of the Ecliptic. The Pleiades have been said to “resemble a tiny dipper,” and should not be confused with the “Little Dipper,” or Ursa Minor. The cluster has been of considerable cultural and practical importance around the Earth for millennia.
M45 – The Pleiades, the blue nebulousness around the stars is apparent.
The remaining targets are significantly smaller when viewed in the night sky. Messier 77 (M77), also known as NGC 1068 or the Squid Galaxy, is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Cetus. It is about 47 million light-years (14 Mpc) away from Earth, and was discovered by Pierre Méchain in 1780, who originally described it as a nebula. Méchain then communicated his discovery to Charles Messier, who subsequently listed the object in his catalog. Both Messier and William Herschel described this galaxy as a star cluster. Today, however, the object is known to be a galaxy. It is one of the Seyfert galaxies featured this month. Seyfert galaxies are one of the two largest groups of active galaxies, along with quasar host galaxies. They have quasar-like nuclei (very luminous sources of electromagnetic radiation that are outside of our own galaxy) with very high surface brightness whose spectra reveal strong, high-ionization emission lines, but unlike quasars, their host galaxies are clearly detectable. M77 is one of the brightest Seyfert galaxies visible from Earth and has a diameter of about 27.70 kiloparsecs (90,000 light-years).
In a smart telescope, it appears as a roundish, hazy smudge with a bright core.
M77
Next up is Caldwell 67. NGC 1097 (also known as Caldwell 67 or C67) is a barred spiral galaxy about 45 million light years away in the constellation Fornax. It was discovered by William Herschel on 9 October 1790. It is a severely interacting galaxy with obvious tidal debris and distortions caused by interaction with the companion galaxy NGC 1097A. C67 is also a Seyfert galaxy. Deep photographs revealed four narrow optical jets that appear to emanate from the nucleus. These have been interpreted as manifestations of the (currently weak) active nucleus. The optical jets are in fact composed of stars. The failure to detect atomic hydrogen gas in the jets with the Very Large Array radio telescope and numerical simulations led to the current interpretation that the jets are actually the shattered remains of a cannibalized dwarf galaxy. C67 has a supermassive black hole at its center, which is 140 million times the mass of the Sun.
Here C67 appears as an almost edge-on galaxy, a faint elongated smudge with a bright core.
C67
Finally, we come to C24. NGC 1275 (also known as Perseus A or Caldwell 24) is a type 1.5 Seyfert galaxy located around 225 million light-years away from Earth in the direction of the constellation of Perseus. C24 is a member of the large Perseus Cluster of galaxies. It was discovered by German-British astronomer William Herschel on 17 October 1786.
C24 consists of two galaxies, a central type-cD galaxy in the Perseus Cluster, and a so-called high velocity system (HVS) which lies in front of it. The HVS is moving at 3000 km/s towards the dominant system, and is believed to be merging with the Perseus Cluster. The HVS is not affecting the cD galaxy as it lies at least 200 thousand light years from it. However tidal interactions are disrupting it and the ram pressure produced by its interaction with the intra-cluster medium of Perseus is stripping its gas as well as producing large amounts of star formation within it.
In the photo below, the monster galaxy appears as a roundish smudge near the center. There is a parallelogram shape of four bright smudges. C24 is the lower left member of this group of four.
