I know, I always have a favorite canyon, and it is never the same one as last time, but that's because I keep adding to my list of favorite canyons. Usually when I explore a new (to me) canyon for the first time, it becomes my favorite, so that explains this one. It is near the southern end of the Continental Divide Trail in the Burro Mountains of southwestern New Mexico. I found it while looking for a new site for a trail camera--not too far from here I got some great mountain lion videos--and I just love its twists and turns, its smooth undulating rock. I'd love it more if I saw water in it, but recent rain has at least made things damp, and in spots there are minute pools. What charms me the most are two tiny springs which emerge from the rock itself to fill equally tiny pools. The lower one is fouled by cattle, but the upper one is inaccessible to them--thank God SOMETHING in this area is off-limits to them!--and that one is like a miniature oasis supporting a miniature ecosystem, including the beautiful (and also tiny) flowers featured here. I have no idea what they are, if anyone would like to help me out. A botanist I am not.

Today's hike in the canyon had a purpose, which was to relocate one of my trail cameras. I already had a good spot for it, overlooking one of my water stations (which I learned is appreciated by rock squirrels and javelinas, and also one hiker's little dog), but getting to the camera became too much of a challenge for me. It was strapped to a solid little oak shrub and very well concealed, but the slope up to the tree was a nearly impossible scramble. It is nicely relocated in what today I dubbed Javelina Canyon, a little offshoot of the main canyon, because after I'd situated the trail cam and was ready to head back, I realized that a small band of javelinas had arrived at the mouth of the offshoot canyon. Sigh...I let them know I was there and was allowed safe passage which is not always the case, and would not have been the case if I'd had a dog with me.

I hope you are refreshed by the varied desert southwest scenes in these photos. Everywhere you look it's something different.

Since the moon is currently around the full phase and getting new deep images will need to wait for a few days, I decided to reprocess one of my images from last year to see if I could pull out more detail. The image below is of the Sombrero Galaxy, also known as Messier 104. This galaxy in the constellation of Virgo is around 32 million light years away (+ or - 3 million light years). I have also included my previous image for comparison (same data, I just reprocessed the image with a bit more expertise that I have gained since last year).This image was taken with a canon DSLR with 10, six minute exposures with the ISO set to 1600 using a 4096 mm focal length at F10. All comments, questions and suggestions are welcome.

Why are you taking an image of a static subject at 1/1000 sec? Your Sony RX100M7 is rated to 4-stops in-body stabilization (IBIS). The image was captured at ISO-3200. Why not ISO-100 and 1/30 sec (5-stops different)?

The 1-inch sensor has a 2.7x crop factor. The image reports 28.5mm for an equivalent 77mm. Letting the camera shoot at 1/30 exercises that IBIS by just over 1-stop support.

Using the camera in a way that holds the ISO as low as possible while still obtaining sharply focus images is far cheaper in terms of (a) software costs, (b) computer equipment costs to run the software, and (c) time-effort to process your images.