Great Horned Owl at 75 yards

I'll bet if we could poll thousands of backyard astronomers, we'd find that a large percentage of them would claim owls as their friends. I fell for that notion years ago, but I'm over it now. Make no mistake, owls don't give a hoot about backyard astronomers! But when we're out there night after night, listening to the owls hooting at each other, it is very tempting to believe that they're curious about us and that they're trying to communicate with us. Backyard astronomy is a lonely hobby, and we welcome even the companionship of the animal kingdom. I must admit that of all the wild animal calls, a hooting owl is one of the most soothing, non-threatening sounds to hear nearby in the darkness. I, too, like to think that they're reaching out to me for companionship.

One night in 2020, as I was outside going through the process of shutting down my astronomical observations, an owl was perched on a nearby power-line pole. For several minutes, the owl was hooting but there was no reply from other owls. I could see its tiny silhouette in the moonlight, and I went inside to get a pair of binoculars to get a better look. I watched it for a while, and it seemed as if it was in no hurry to go anywhere. I wished I could take a picture, but it was pretty dark out there.

And then it occurred to me that my 11-inch f/2 telescope would probably be able to capture an owl in moonlight. But was there enough time? My electronic focuser is pretty slow, and I'd have to run the motor for quite a while to change the focus from infinity to about 75 yards, which was my best guess at how far away the owl was. Of course, I was shutting down my telescope anyway, so what did I have to lose? If the owl were to fly away before I could get a picture, so what?

I powered off the telescope so that the tracking motors (which were tracking the stars) didn't cause any motion blur. Then I loosened the clutches and moved the scope by hand, looking through the Telrad finder scope as I aimed the telescope at the owl on top of the power pole. Next, I put my camera in "focus mode," which takes a small subframe of the middle of the field of view and shoots back-to-back exposures at a rate of about two frames per second. I could see the blurry form of the owl and I moved the focuser, watching the image become smaller and more focused. I was amazed that after all this time, the owl was still there, and when it looked pretty sharp, I began to take some exposures.

Not only did the owl seem quite happy to sit there and let me take pictures of it with my telescope, but it also sat very still, allowing me to shoot 3-second exposures of it and get sharp images by moonlight! All told, I shot 89 images of the owl before it took flight. The photo op lasted about 20 minutes. When the owl flew away, I allowed the camera's thermo-electric cooler to warm up and I completed my takedown process and put the equipment away. 

The next day, I looked through the 90 pictures I had taken of my owl friend, and I was thrilled to have shot some keepers! I sent some shots to my family and friends, and they all loved them. But then I got to thinking.... I took pictures of this owl through my telescope using the same configuration that I use to hunt for supernovae each night. How does the size of the owl in my pictures compare to galaxies? I can literally bring up a galaxy image and make a one-to-one comparison with the owl! Sure, it's kind of arbitrary since the owl was about 75 yards away. Its size in my images would be larger or smaller, depending on how far away it was. But assuming the owl was 75 yards away, how does it compare to some of the galaxies I've shot?

I brought up several galaxy images and the one that seemed to be about the same size in my images as the owl was M 51, the Whirlpool Galaxy. 

Fascinating! From a distance of 75 yards, a Great Horned Owl, with an average height of about 22 inches, is the same size as a galaxy with a diameter of 76,000 light years that lies 23 million light years away.

 

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