June 7, 2011 - Thermal Evidence

After a long day of cleaning out long forgotten equipment cages and back closets at work, someone found a thermal imager.  I convinced its new owner to let me borrow it for the weekend and see if I can capture anything string too close to my garden at night.

A cool side note: while using the imager to watch two bats do aerials I had aimed the device up to the sky.  While aiming up I saw a shooting star.  I was blown away by the chance just happening to be looking through the screen as a meteorite went by that particular patch of sky.  I aimed it at another point of night sky and sure enough another meteorite.  In the course of the few minutes of remaining battery life I saw a dozen or so meteorites!  You can see so many more by their thermal signature than you can with the naked eye.  I wish I had discovered this earlier in the weekend!

 Things just look cool though this thing!

If you look close you can see three deer on the screen.  They were almost impossible to see without the imager!  They are a ways out in the field so I guess they were behaving.  

Here's one that got pretty close just after dark.  He's within 30 feet of the patio but still a ways away from the garden.

And finally, here is conclusive evidence that the stupid deer are venturing into the garden at night.  Without the electric fence it's only a matter of time before I go down to check on the garden and get angry that my plants are eaten!