One of my favorite locations to photograph is along Templin Road in northern Chester County. The area is adjacent to the Thomas P. Bentley Nature Preserve and Warwick Furnace and sits in the valley of the French Creek, South Branch.
This pond has been a favorite subject in the past. Here is a sunset shot from quite a few years ago.
… and a swan from years gone by.
The Warwick Furnace Farms is a historic district that is located in northern Chester County that includes the ruins of an early iron furnace that was owned by Anna Rutter Nutt, widow of Samuel Nutt. The iron furnace was previously featured here. I wanted to return to visit the farm and was able to do so when I had the day off for Good Friday.
Anna Rutter Nutt was the daughter of Thomas Rutter, who erected the first ironwork in Pennsylvania at Pine Forge Mansion and Industrial Site. Samuel Nutt bought the original tracts of land for the Coventry area with partners William Branson and Mordecai Lincoln, the great-great grandfather of Abraham Lincoln. The 786-acre historic district was listed by the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. The related village of Coventryville can be seen here.
In 2015, the French & Pickering Creeks Conservation Trust permanently protected the 553-acre Warwick Furnace Farm through conservation easements and the acquisition of 108 acres, which will be the future home of a public preserve.
The ironmaster’s house and workers’ houses, the historic farmhouse and the barns in this historic district are currently used in the operation of a working farm, which produces lavender and lavender products. The farm has a shop and which sells the wonderful local lavender products. Check the web site for information, hours, special events and to purchase online.
Yellow Springs Village is a historic village in West Pikeland Township in Chester County, Pennsylvania. The community includes historic churches, established in the 1770s by German Reformed and Lutheran members. It has been a location for a boys’ school, the country school of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fiine Arts, a restaurant, an inn and many other uses. Today it is a haven for artists and hosts special events.
The village was busy the day I visited, so I concentrated on the peripheral areas. The early Spring color was still in evidence. You can learn more here.
I will be taking a break this week to celebrate the holiday and regroup from a colder than average winter that largely kept me cooped up inside.
In the meantime, enjoy some shots from Springtimes past.
Although the weather has continued to be worse than normal, I was able to get out in March and image the night sky objects for the Hubble Anniversary Challenge for the month. More about the challenge can be found here.
This month’s objects contained a few star clusters. The first of which is Messier 67, a lovely open cluster in Cancer. It is also known as M67 or NGC 2682 and is sometimes called the King Cobra Cluster or the Golden Eye Cluster. It was discovered by Johann Gottfried Koehler in 1779. Estimates of its age range between 3.2 and 5 billion years. Distance estimates are likewise varied, but typically are 800–900 parsecs . It is well populated, almost appearing like a globular cluster, and is a paradigm study object in stellar evolution. I find it to be the most interesting looking object of this group.
Next up is the well-known Beehive Cluster, also an open cluster in Cancer. It is known as Praesepe (Latin for “manger”, “cot” or “crib”), M44, NGC 2632, or Cr 189. One of the nearest open clusters to Earth, it contains a larger population of stars than other nearby bright open clusters, holding around 1,000 stars. Under dark skies, the Beehive Cluster looks like a small nebulous object to the naked eye, and has been known since ancient times. Classical astronomer Ptolemy described it as a “nebulous mass in the breast of Cancer”. It was among the first objects that Galileo studied with his telescope. The distance to M44 is often cited to be between 160 and 187 parsecs (520–610 light years).
Age and proper motion coincide with those of the Hyades, suggesting they may share similar origins. Both clusters also contain red giants and white dwarfs, which represent later stages of stellar evolution, along with many main sequence stars.
Continuing the theme of open clusters, we continue to Messier 48, also known as NGC 2548. It is in the equatorial constellation of Hydra. It sits near Hydra’s westernmost limit with Monoceros, to the east and slightly south of Hydra’s brightest star, Alphard. This grouping was discovered by Charles Messier in 1771, but there is no cluster precisely where Messier indicated; he made an error, as he did with M47. Credit for discovery is sometimes given instead to Caroline Herschel in 1783.
M48 is visible to the naked eye under good atmospheric conditions. The cluster is located some 2,500 light-years from the Sun. The age estimated from isochrones is 400±100 million years, while gyrochronology age estimate is 450±50 million yearsr – in good agreement.
Finally, we come to Caldwell 48, also known as NGC 2775,. It is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Cancer. It is 67 million light-years away from the Milky Way. It was discovered by William Herschel in 1783. C48 belongs to the Antlia-Hydra Cluster of galaxies and is the most prominent member of the NGC 2775 Group, a small galaxy group in the Virgo Super-cluster, along with the Local Group. Other members of the NGC 2775 Group include NGC 2777 and UGC 4781. This object reminds us that Spring is known as “galaxy season” due to the prevalence of these distant objects in the night sky.
Due to the distance, this objects appears small in Seestar S50. It is the fuzzy object in the center of the photo.
I took advantage of some nearly 80 degree weather to go to the Brandywine Museum of Art before my annual pass ran out. While I was having some mushroom soup in the cafe, I noticed a few fisherman in Brandywine Creek. I’m not sure what they were fishing for in March, maybe panfish.
I made a few stops on the way home to get some RAW files to test new photo editing software that I am using (goodbye Adobe). These shots, as well as the forsythia from last week, are the result.
First a some exterior shots of the Goshenville historic site on Route 352.
The next stop was the Thornbury CSA even though it is a bit early for local produce.
The Duportail House and Federal Barn lie within the Chesterbrook development in Chester County and date back to colonial times. A history of these properties can be found at https://duportailhouse.com/history/. It is a location that I photograph often, if not for the pages of this blog. The house is on the National Register of Historic Places and can be rented for weddings or other events.
Here is a look at the property after a January snowfall.
My attempts at imaging the February objects for the Hubble Anniversary Challenge were more timely. You can read more about this challenge the Pennsylvania Night Sky page. These images are taken for documentation and learning purposes and are not meant to be great examples of astrophotography. The items below are mostly star clusters, which I find easier to photograph. Three also all contain a connection to the Herschel family.
The first object is the star cluster Messier 46. It is also known as NGC 2437, and it is an open cluster of stars in the constellation of Puppis. It was discovered by Charles Messier in 1771. It is about 5,000 light-years away from Earth. There are an estimated 500 stars in the cluster, and it is thought to have an estimated age of 251.2 million years old.
M46 is in the center and skewed about to the right in this photo.
Caldwell 58 (aka NGC 2360 or Caroline’s Cluster) is an open cluster in the constellation Canis Major. It was discovered on 26 February 1783 by Caroline Herschel, who described it as a “beautiful cluster of pretty compressed stars near 1/2 degree in diameter”. Her notes were overlooked until her brother William included the cluster in his 1786 catalogue of 1000 clusters and nebulae and acknowledged her as the discoverer.
Caldwell 39 is known as the Clown Face Nebula, Lion Nebula or the Eskimo Nebula (aka NGC 2392). It is a bipolar double-shell planetary nebula. It was discovered by astronomer William Herschel in 1787. The formation resembles a person’s head surrounded by a parka hood and is surrounded by gas that composed the outer layers of a Sun-like star. A planetary nebula is an area of cosmic gas and dust formed from the cast-off outer layers of a dying star. Despite their name, planetary nebulae don’t have anything to do with planets.
C39 lies about 6500 light-years away, and is visible with a small telescope in the constellation of Gemini. The object is the round spot in the center of the image below that is ringed by a faint blue glow.
Caldwell 25 (aka NGC 2419 ) is a globular cluster in the constellation Lynx. It was discovered by William Herschel on December 31, 1788. NGC 2419 is at a distance of about 300,000 light years from the Solar System and about the same distance from the Galactic Center.
C25 bears the nickname “the Intergalactic Wanderer,” which was bestowed when it was once thought not to be in orbit around the Milky Way. Its orbit takes it farther away from the galactic center than the Magellanic Clouds, but it can be considered as part of the Milky Way. It takes three billion years to make one trip around the galaxy.
The globular cluster is the fuzzy spot in the center of the image.
I was able to attend the first star party of the season on March 8 and got to view multiple objects (such as the Orion Nebula, Uranus and a crescent phase of Venus) through a variety of telescopes. It was still quite cold in early March but still worth it to get out before daylight savings time set in.
