Vernal: A Spring Photo Project (Day 51 through Day 60)

I've fallen way behind on sharing the images from my spring photography project.  Here are my photos from Day 51 (09 May) through Day 60 (18 May).  If you haven't been following along, my goal is to photograph something outdoors in nature every single day this spring.

Day 51 (09 May 2019) - Tulips

I love tulips.  They are the only non-native flower that I regularly add to our home garden.  Last fall we planted nearly three hundred tulip bulbs all red, orange, and yellow.  I love the pop of color that they add to spring.

Day 52 (10 May 2019) - Blue-gray Gnatcatcher

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a birder.  I do not chase birds, but this spring the birds seemed to find me everywhere I went.  This blue-gray gnatcatcher (Polioptila caerulea) was photographed at Mission Creek Woodland Park as it foraged on low branches of an eastern hemlock tree.  A second after I captured this image the bird flew off.

Day 53 (11 May 2019) - World Migratory Bird Celebration

So this photograph was taken indoors.  It's the only image of this entire photography project to be taken inside a building.  (I also took one indoor image during my Summer 2018 photography project.)  This picture shows my friend Rebecca Lessard with Pearl the red-tailed hawk at the World Migratory Bird Day Celebration at the Ziibiwing Center in Mt. Pleasant.  Rebecca is the founder and executive director of Wings of Wonder, a raptor rehabilitation center located near Empire, MI.  She has been the presenter at the Ziibiwing Center WMB Celebration several times.  I think this is the best image that I have ever taken of Rebecca - she is a blur of motion when presenting and it's almost impossible to photograph her well in low light.

Day 54 (12 May 2019) - Jack-in-the-pulpit

Forest Hill Natura Area is not particularly rich in spring woodland wildflowers, but I did manage to find several jack-in-the-pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum) plants in the South Woods.  I love all the shades of green in this image.  This photo was taken right at ground level using the LCD live viewer to compose the shot - I like this feature as it means I no longer have to lay on the ground to shoot images from this angle.

Day 55 (13 May 2019) - Northern Parula Warbler

Another bird that found me.  This male Northern Parula (Setophaga americana) landed on a branch right at eye level during a walk through Mill Pond Park.  Normally these birds are found high in the canopy, but they will be found lower in the forest during migration.  Although as I said before, I am not a birder, it's hard not to admire a bird as beautiful as this one.

Day 56 (14 May 2019) - Large-flowered Trillium

The Chippewa Watershed Conservancy has recently been gifted a new property along the Chippewa River east of Mt. Pleasant.  This property consists of three acres of riverbank and will eventually be developed as a preserve with a canoe landing.  On May 14th a small group visited the property to conduct a biological survey.  I identified approximately forty species of herbaceous plants including this large-flowered trillium (Trillium grandiflorum).  This image has be deliberately underexposed so that the highlight didn't completely wash out.  I like that you can see all the little grains of pollen both on the stamens and on the white petals surrounding the stamens.

Day 57 (15 May 2019) - Waxing Gibbous Moon

I have really grown to enjoy photographing the moon.  Fortunately, the sky in Alma is dark enough that I can do it right from my driveway any time the notion strikes me.  I recently purchased a new (better) tripod head that holds long lenses in place much better than what I was previously using, making this kind of photography easier.  This image of a waxing gibbous moon has been cropped to a 16:9 widescreen format for no other reason than I like how it looks.

Day 58 (16 May 2019) - Common Blue Violet

Another image photographed at home.  Common blue violets (Viola sororia) are slowly trying to take over both as a groundcover is our flower gardens and as the dominant plant in parts of our lawn.  The seeds of this flower are eagerly collected by ants.  The ants eat a fleshy coating known as an eliasome and discard the seeds in their garbage middens where they sprout easily.  I like the details such as the hairs of the flower's beard and the dark veins on the petals.

Day 59 (17 May 2019) - Environmental Education Day

For each of the past ten years the Isabella Conservation District has hosted an environmental education day for third grade classrooms in the county.  This year over 550 students and 100 adults attended.  One of the many highlights is a live display of Michigan reptiles and amphibians.  I love how the students in this image are interacting calmly and with curiosity toward an eastern garter snake.

Day 60 (18 May 2019) - Bleeding Hearts

Another photograph from our home flower gardens.  While tulips are my favorite garden flower, Shara loves bleeding hearts.  She is still upset about the bleeding heart plants that we left behind when we moved more than eight years ago.  (I will admit that the bleeding hearts that we planted in Alma have not yet grown to the magnificence of the plants that we left behind.)  One of the first photographs that I ever took with my first digital SLR camera was of a bleeding heart flower in that garden.  I cropped this image to a 16:9 widescreen format to focus solely on the flowers and remove some of the distracting foliage of other plants.

Crescent Moon (11 March 2019) and an upcoming event

Tonight's waxing crescent moon as seen from my driveway...

Our next full moon will be on the Spring Equinox (20 March) - I am leading a hike that night at the Chippewa Watershed Conservancy's Sylvan Solace Preserve.  For more information, check their website.

Full Moon - February 2019

On Monday (18 February 2019) I led a nighttime hike at the Chippewa Watershed Conservancy's Sylvan Solace Preserve.  The snowy woods was well-lit by a nearly full moon - at 98% visible the moon could be considered full.  This was my third full moon hike of the winter.  Altogether, about 50 people have joined me on the three hikes.  Monday's hike was attended by nine people.

Monday's full moon was the best we have seen this winter here in Mid-Michigan.  Not only was the sky clear (unlike December) and the temperature moderate (not like the 20 below windchill in January, but February's full moon could be considered a "supermoon".  A supermoon occurs because the moon's orbit around the earth is not a perfect circle.  Instead the orbit is more like an ellipse, resulting in times when the moon is closer to the earth than other times.  If the moon is near its closest point at the full moon stage, the moon is commonly referred to as a supermoon.

Although I didn't photograph the hike, I took several photos of the moon from the parking lot before the hike began.  This was my favorite image - it has been cropped down to a square shape.

I have one more night hike scheduled this winter at Sylvan Solace.  This final hike will take place on the next full moon.  This full moon just happens to coincide with the Vernal Equinox on March 20th.

Lunar Eclipse (20 January 2019)

A lunar eclipse occurs any time the earth's shadow passes across the moon's surface.  This can only happen during a full moon, when the sun and moon are on opposite sides of the sky.  A full moon occurs approximately every 27 days - so you might think that a lunar eclipse would happen every month. 

That is not the case. 

The moon's orbit around the earth does not line up exactly with the plane of the earth's orbit around the sun.  The moon's orbit is offset by about 5 degrees so a lunar eclipse is a rarer occurrence than a full moon.  The next total lunar eclipse will not happen until May 2021, but it will not be visible in Mid-Michigan.  The next total lunar eclipse that we will be able to see in its entirety will be on the night of 15-16 May 2022.

Last night's eclipse was special for another reason.  The path that the moon takes around the earth is not a perfect circle - it's more of an ellipse.  Sometime the moon is closer to the earth than it is at other times.  The closest approach to the earth is approximately 221,000 miles and the furthest is more than 252,000 miles!  The closest approach to the earth is known as the perigee; the furthest distance from the earth is known as the apogee.  Last night's full moon occurred when the moon was near perigee.  These mean that the moon appeared larger than normal (about 14% larger than it would during apogee).  Although not an astronomical term, a full moon at perigee is commonly called a "supermoon".

Luckily for me, I didn't have to go far to see and photograph last nights eclipse.  I took the following sequence of photographs from my driveway.  In the first image the eclipse has not yet started.  The second two pictures show a partial eclipse as the earth's shadow begins to pass over the moon.  

The final photograph shows the moon at full eclipse.  Even at full eclipse some light does leak around the earth and reflect from the moon's surface.  The earth's atmosphere scatters the shorter wavelengths of visible light (blue and violet) with only the longest wavelengths (orange and red) passing through unchanged - this is the same reason sunsets and sunrises appear red.  Because the red light is the most likely to pass through the atmosphere, the moon appears red during a full lunar eclipse. 

Celebrating a (Solar) New Year

On January 1st, much of the world will be celebrating the new year, but this Friday might be a more appropriate day to celebrate (at least from an astronomical viewpoint).

This Friday (22 December 2018) marks the Winter Solstice, the date on which the calendar changes seasons from Fall to Winter here in Mid-Michigan (and the rest of the Northern Hemisphere).  Winter will officially begin at 5:23 PM EST.

The word solstice comes from two Latin root words sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still).  On the solstice, the path of the sun appears to stand still! 

Assume that you were to awaken every morning before dawn and mark the location that the sun rises on the eastern horizon.  You would notice that the sun does not in fact arise from the same place every day.  Instead it wanders north and south along the horizon, moving north during the Winter and Spring and back south again during the Summer and Fall.  On the Summer Solstice (June 21st) and Winter Solstice (December 21st), the sun ceases to move further along the horizon, appearing to "stand still" before reversing its course the next day.

You have probably already noticed in addition to the location of the rising sun, the length of day and night vary throughout the year.  As the sun progresses south, the day shortens and the night lengthens.  The Winter Solstice marks the shortest day (and longest night) of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.  Here in Mid-Michigan we will mark the date with approximately 8 hours 57 minutes of daylight.  As the sunrise moves back north along the horizon our days will slowly get longer until on the Summer Solstice we will experience nearly 15 hours 25 minutes of daylight.

Why does the sun move and the length of day vary?

It all has to do with a tilt in the Earth's axis.  The Earth rotates on its axis approximately once every 24 hours - giving us the length of our day.  It also revolves around the sun approximately once every 365 days - the length of our year.  If the Earth's axis was perpendicular the plane on which it revolves around the sun, our days would be the same length throughout the year (approximately 12 hours), but the axis is not perpendicular to this plane.  Instead the Earth's axis tilts 23.5 degrees from the vertical.

The points on the globe that the axis revolves around are referred to as the North and South Poles.  The axis is always pointed toward the same location in the sky.  The North Pole points toward the "North Star" - Polaris.  As the earth revolves around the sun, sometimes the North Pole is closer to the sun, sometimes the South Pole is closer to the sun.  When the North Pole is at its closest, we experience Summer in Mid-Michigan and the Southern Hemisphere experiences Winter.  When the North Pole is at its furthest, we experience Winter and the Southern Hemisphere experiences Summer.

On two days of the year, the Earth's axis is perpendicular to the plane of its revolution.  On those two days we do experience equal periods of day and night because the sun rises due east and sets due west.  During the rest of the year our hours of daylight vary depending on where the axis is pointed.  During our summer months, the tilt in the axis means that the northern hemisphere is closer to the sun and receives more hours of sunlight.  During the winter months, the reverse is true.  On the Winter Solstice, the North Pole is tilted at its furthest angle from the sun resulting in the shortest day (and longest night) of the year for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere.

Why did I say that the Winter Solstice would be a better day to celebrate the new year?

Tracking the position of the rising sun was among the first astronomical observations.  Many ancient monuments seem to have been constructed as solar observatories, aligned with the locations of sunrise and sunset on the longest and shortest day of the year.  To early agricultural societies especially, tracking the seasons accurately could mean the difference between a bountiful harvest and failure of a year's crops.  The day that the sun "stood still" in its southward journey and then began to return north, bringing more hours of daylight and eventually warmer weather seems such an obvious point to mark the beginning of a new year!

Join me on a hike to celebrate the Solstice!

To celebrate the Winter Solstice, I am leading a nighttime hike at the Chippewa Watershed Conservancy's Sylvan Solace Preserve.  This hike will begin at 7:00PM.  Sylvan Solace Preserve is located on Pickard Road, between Gilmore Road and Littlefield Road, approximately 8 miles west of downtown Mt. Pleasant.

We are doing a nighttime hike because another celestial event lines up with the solstice this year - a full moon.  (Technically the full moon will be on December 22nd, but it will be more than 97% illuminated on the night of the 21st.)  We are expecting light snowfall early in the day - this should brighten up the woods.  Hopefully the moon will peek through the expected clouds and illuminate our hike.  The trails at Sylvan Solace are flat and well-defined making this a great first night hiking experience!  I hope to do the hike without any artificial lights.  Wear warm clothes and bring a headlamp or flashlight just to be safe.

Waxing gibbous moon (27 January 2018)

On Saturday (27 JAN) shortly after sunset I went outside and noticed a gorgeous waxing gibbous moon.  To say that a moon is waxing means that the illuminated portion of the moon is growing - the moon is getting closer to being full.  The opposite of waxing is waning.  A waning moon is a moon that is past full and its illuminated percentage is decreasing.  Gibbous means that a moon is more than 50% full - the moon last night was at 83%.

I took about 30 images of the moon in all.  Here is one of the original images.

For the photo geeks out there - this image was shot on a Canon 60D with a Canon 100-400 lens (at 400mm), shot at f/11, using an ISO of 100 and exposed for 1/100 second.


I decided to crop this image in a couple of different ways.  First as a horizontal image...

Then as a vertical image...

I'm not sure which of these crops I like better.  In both I intentionally placed the moon slightly off-center.  I like the expanse of black extending further from the lit face of the moon.  This is the same technique used in portraits to give the subject somewhere to look or in photos of animals to give them space within the frame of the photo to look or move.