From My Nature Journal: A Smile in the Sky, And Other Things to Grin At

Of particular pleasure to most naturalists are the moments they see something they've never seen before, along with the thoughtful realization that they might never see such a thing again in their life. Now, interestingly, these 'seeings' are not particularly rare, as there is so incredibly much to observe on, under and above land, sea and sky, especially if one is a generalist like me. Such delights are the compensation or remuneration of what is called 'paying attention.' And it's the 'paying' part of that phrase that I like, because their return in value, if you will, are commensurate with the investment of the attention one pays.

The seeings range from the curious to the cute, from the nearly unbelievable to the believable but still spectacular.

The curious. It rained buckets after dark the night before last, nearly three and a half inches in four hours. At one point, as I stood at our bedroom window for a few moments staring at the awesome sight of the downpour amid intermittent lightning flashes, I noticed several tiny glow worms on what had to be absolutely sopped turf, lighting up and dimming back. It left me inquiring as to the purpose. Who knows? Perhaps they were just sending SOS's. (See one of my earlier posts, "Holy Buckets in the World is That?" for a similar curiosity.)

The cute. Over the last couple weeks, Gail and I have picked wild apples several places, making a little jelly and applesauce along the way, but more to fill a couple five-gallon buckets and set some out overnight for the deer. This week as we began doing so, the apples were gone every morning, and we sat at the window eating breakfast, smugly satisfied to have provided a little treat. (Sometimes we're rewarded with them coming in at dusk while we can watch them, always a pleasure.) But no. One morning upon an earlier rising than usual, I watched with both displeasure and amusement as a diminutive red squirrel climbed the stumps upon which the apples lay and carried each, one at a time, into the woods, burying them under fallen leaves. Some of these apples were over half its size and surely close to its body weight, a comical sight.

The nearly unbelievable. I'll warn you now, people think I'm pulling their leg when I tell them of this experience. Years ago, Gail and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary with a trip to the Canadian Maritime Provinces. While hiking in a remote area of New Brunswick near the Hopewell Rocks, we stopped dead in our tracks when we heard a crow in a tall tree above us seeming to sing "It's a Small World After All." Now, we had known that crows are smart enough to mimic, but it still challenged our limits of believability. So we stood under the tree for a few minutes and listened to it over and over; quite soon, other hikers came down the trail, a young couple, and we thought we'd put it to the test. Stopping them, we asked if they'd mind pausing to listen to this crow and tell us what they thought they heard; we must have seemed like crazy old people. After the crow called, the woman replied, "Uhh, it's... a small world after all...?" Bingo. Something else crazier than us. We all laughed with incredulity, and I commented, knowing also that some crows can migrate south for the winter, "I guess there's no question where this guy spends his winters!" It must have been one of those that perch nearby and snag French fries and other treats out of people's hands while they're waiting in line at Disney World, listening to that infernal ditty! Who (or what) EVER can get THAT brain worm out of their head, having once stood in that line?

Finally, the believable but still spectacular. I was not even familiar with these two things before seeing them, and though I've only 'seen' the latter through my sister, they arrest me just the same. Many of us have seen sundogs or glorioles. Sundogs are small arcs of rainbow color, 22 degrees either or both sides of the sun when low in the sky, refracting and separating the colors of the sun's rays as a prism does, through suspended ice crystals. Glorioles are rings around the sun or moon (or partial rings) that are also a refraction of light through high altitude ice crystals. But the thing about both sundogs and glorioles is that their arc bends toward the light source, whether sun or moon; in other words, they appear as circles, or partial circles, surrounding the light.

One day as I walked on a sunny afternoon, a small patch of color near the zenith somehow caught my eye, and I found a small, single arc floating among the clouds almost directly overhead. I thought it odd to see a sundog in that spot, as they usually present themselves nearer the horizon earlier or later in the day. But then I realized its arc was bending away from the sun. What in the world? Well, that was called, I found as I researched later, a circumzenithal arc, but I also read, Cheshire Cat notwithstanding, that it was also called 'the smile in the sky,' which brought the same to my own countenance. That’s also a much more fun title, I’d say. (It’s also called Bravais’ arc, or an upside-down rainbow.) Circumzenithal means ‘surrounding the zenith,’ zenith being the point straight up. These arcs are also formed through high altitude ice crystals, appear 46 degrees above the sun (about a quarter of the sky), and, I was surprised to find, are not that rare; it’s just that few of us ever look straight over the tops of our heads. In this photo, I blocked the sun by the tree in order to see ‘the smile’ more clearly.

Then just last month my sister Carolyn sent me this photo pair of crepuscular and anticrepuscular rays, taken one evening from the roof of her Chicago condo building. I had often seen the former but never the latter. Crepuscular means ‘relating to twilight,’ which is when these rays tend to show themselves best. These rays can often be seen while the sun is low in the sky, especially as the sunlight shines through thick cumulus clouds. (They’re also called splintered light, or god rays. Hmmm…) But I have always thought that the coolest effect is when crepuscular rays show when the sun is below the horizon. Soon before the sun rises or soon after it sets, our star occasionally throws its shadows and light-rays across the sky as it shines through clouds, or even landforms like mountains or hills, that are below our own horizon, which we, of course, cannot see. All those rays and shadows seem to be emanating from the same point below the horizon, like spokes on one half of a wheel, which, of course, they are, coming as they are from our sun's single point of light. Most spectacular is when it happens when our own sky is fairly cloudless. But I’ve also particularly enjoyed it while flying at high altitude into the sunset, when I have been able to see rays opposite the sunset and behind me forming a single, large, arced, purplish shadow, which is actually the shadow of our earth itself, including its curvature, another cool expression of crepuscular light. What I had never seen before is when those rays reach all the way across the sky and exit the opposite horizon, again, as like spokes in another half wheel opposite the sun. Along the way, they appear to expand widely over one's head and converge again on the horizon opposite. But this is only how it appears; the rays are actually nearly parallel, perspective from a single point being what it is, in the same way that parallel railroad tracks seem to come to a point in the distance). These rays opposite the sun are called anticrepuscular, 'anti' of course a prefix from the Greek designating opposition. Sometimes a ray reaches all the way overhead from west to east (or east to west), as some did at the time of these two photos. You can look at both photos and picture the full sky's connecting rays, keeping in mind that one photo faces west to the sunset and the other east (note the Chicago skyline), thus, why the rays are flipped from right to left.

I wax. It's a hazard for us naturalists, as I've said many times. But all of this is to affirm, as I began, what a treat it is to be feted with new and wonderful things one has never observed or experienced before, irrespective of a lifetime of observation.

I've walked with God now for well over a half century. Though much about this walk has become familiar, God also often teaches or shows me new things, or new ways to understand old things. It's why I write. But such was familiar to the Biblical writers as well, with Jeremiah celebrating God's tender mercies of old which seemed to him absolutely 'new every morning' (Lamentations 3:22-23); or James reveling in God's '...good and perfect gifts from above... coming down from the Father of lights, with whom can be no variation nor turning shadow' (James 1:17). Beautiful image, that one, eh? Or perhaps this from 1Corinthians 2:9 -- 'Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor the mind of humans conceive what God has in store for those who love him.'

Yes.

~~ RGM, September 23, 2018

From My Nature Journal -- Celebrating Earth Day by Praying through the Creation Story: Day 4, "Aware"

Introduction: The ways people pursue God, or even pray, can be as different as the very people who pursue God. Spiritual writers and mentors have long appreciated these varieties of pathways that pilgrims have followed in their prayer journey. For example, many are led to deep devotion through such things as music, contemplation or activism, but others have found that it’s the beauty and mystery of the natural, created world that leads them to a humbling encounter of praise and prayer with their Creator God. Of course, the pathways mix to varying degrees according to our personalities and interests.

Those who find nature an important spiritual pathway can see their own faith story unfold in the creation story of Genesis 1 and 2 in the Christian and Jewish Bible. Being mindful not to worship creation but only the Creator, a consideration of the natural world not only helps them do that, but also guides them in their stewardship of what God has created. Each day this week we will look to the ‘seven day’ creation story from these first two chapters of the Bible’s very first book. All references are from the Bible’s New Revised Standard Version.

Day 4 – “Aware” -- And God said, “Let there be lights in the… sky… to give light upon the earth…” (Genesis 1:14-15)

Read: Genesis 1:1, Genesis 1:14-19, Genesis 9:8-17, Psalm 8 and Matthew 16:1-4

Reflect: Lights in the firmament… Yes, enjoying the beauty of sky phenomena – sunrises and sets, rainbows, shooting stars, clouds, sundogs, aurora, glorioles, constellations and planets – is all about being in the right place at the right time to see them. But they’re also about something else: awareness. How often have I lifted my eyes to a fading rainbow or gloriole (a ring around the sun -- see photo above, a shot I took while visiting my daughter in ALaska), or missed the meteorite someone else in the group is always bound to see, because I was too preoccupied to notice them. I not only missed the chance for beauty, I missed the chance for gratitude. Say nothing of the pleasures of the more heady pursuits of astronomy or meteorology; there are myriad simple pleasures to be observed.

Oh, to have the curious, wholehearted spirit of a King David in Psalm 8, or of a John Muir, the grandpappy of Christian naturalists, who was quoted, “Look at that now… And to think that God should plan to bring us feckless creatures here at just the right moment, and then flash such glories at us! Man, we are not worthy of such honor! Praise God from Whom all blessings flow!” I’m not even certain what ‘feckless’ is, but I can get an idea from Muir’s enthusiasm!

Here’s the clincher, though. Our awareness of God’s constant presence can be as overlooked as our failure to notice or appreciate a rainbow. God said to Noah, “…it shall be a sign…” (Genesis 9:13) How many other signs of God’s presence and faithfulness do I routinely snub?

Observe: We’re back to looking to the sky today, as we did on day 2, but I’ll not ask for a five-minute retreat. Whenever outdoors, try today or tomorrow to simply look up several times throughout the day. Use that moment to notice what God might have up there; but then use the moment also to express your gratitude for God’s relentless, brooding presence over you.

Pray: Lord, a hymnwriter wrote that your lights in the sky “…join with all nature in manifold witness to thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.” I may not notice the glories of the sky as often as you present them, but may I never fail to notice your communications and activity in my life. Amen.

Hymn for the Day: “Christ Whose Glory Fills the Skies”

Link for the Day: A blogpost of mine on the size of the universe

From My Nature Journal: It's a Big Place out There...

Ever since I was a child I remember lying back on the grass on warm summer evenings, looking up at the stars, and saying with King David in Psalm 8, “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast established, what is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou dost care for him? Yet thou hast made him little less than God… (vss. 3-5).”

Some have looked at that same sky and have found themselves discounting the existence of a personal God, what with the vastness of the universe and all; maybe a God could exist who created all of this, but he surely could not trouble himself with the minutiae of me. On the contrary, I have always found David’s confession to be my own: I don’t get it, I don’t know why he’d want to do it (except for love’s sake), but somehow, when it comes down to it, God both knows us and cares for us. Of that I am certain.

…Maybe a God could exist who created

all of this, but he surely could not trouble

himself with the minutiae of me.

It’s this constant source of amazement that has made me a skywatcher ever since my youth. In fact, I had cause to celebrate Psalm 8 again just this week while trying to spot Comet Lovejoy last Sunday night.

What always blows me away, however, is just how big it is out there. So I thought I’d blog this week on some of the celestial objects David himself might have been considering, using some illustrations I ran across years ago for which I do not have a source. I’ll start out with this one, an illustration I call “It’s a Big World out There…”

You can see how much larger Earth is than most of the other planets in our solar system. By the way, if you read this post soon, check out the low western sky about an hour after sunset: the incredibly bright ‘star’ is actually the planet Venus, and the tiny and much dimmer light nearby, a little bit lower and to the right, is Mercury. It’s a rare naked-eye evening conjunction of these two inferior planets, and an exceptionally lovely sight while the sunset’s color still hangs tight against the horizon. (An inferior planet is one in our solar system inside Earth’s orbit around the sun.) Get out and see these soon, though, as the show won’t last long. In fact, in my experience, it is really, really hard to see Mercury at all with the naked-eye, especially when it’s not close to something that helps us pin it. Ready for the next one? I call it, “…Or Not!”

The gaseous superior (outside Earth’s orbit from the sun) planets are enormous compared to Earth. It can almost give you an appreciation for why Pluto was demoted from planet status in 2006. Yet I hear that support is gathering that might allow the little guy to make a comeback soon. Stay tuned. Here’s the next one that I title “But Jupiter’s Not So Hot Either...”

We can hardly fathom the size of our favorite star, by volume equivalent to 1.3 million earths. It makes even Jupiter look more like a marble compared to a beach ball. And heat? The sun’s varies, twenty-seven million degrees Fahrenheit at the core and four million in its coolest spots. But you probably know where I’m going next, though. I call this one “…Because It’s a Big Galaxy Out There.”

Our sun is actually on the tiny size as stars go, and exponentially cooler than the hottest. Sirius is the ‘dog star’ in the constellation Canis Major, The Big Dog (yes, there’s also a Little Dog, but he naturally gets no billing…); Sirius is also the brightest true star in the sky (the planets Jupiter and Venus can appear brighter), and can be found to the lower left of winter’s popular Orion the Hunter. Pollux is one of the twin stars in Gemini, The Twins. Arcturus is in the constellation Bootes the Herdsman, and can always be easily found by following the arc of the handle of the Big Dipper when it is high in the sky (“Arc to Arcturus”). We’ve got one more to go, though: “Actually, It’s all Relative.”

Rigel is the bright, bluish star in the lower right of Orion. This constellation is high overhead in the evenings right now. Aldebaran is the reddish star that constitutes the eye of Taurus the Bull, also directly overhead on early winter evenings. Betelgeuse is the red giant in the upper left of Orion, and huge Antares is the red ‘heart’ of Scorpio the Scorpion, low in the south in the summer evening sky, often confused with ‘The Red Planet’ Mars. Of course, a star’s apparent brightness is always relative to two things: its size and its heat intensity (blue-white stars are hotter than red). But more than this... From our perspective, it is the star’s distance from Earth that plays the biggest part. So obviously, that’s why smaller stars can appear way more luminous to us than larger, hotter ones. Most people cannot see the star closest to Earth, the weak Proxima Centauri, less than five light years away. Sirius, the brightest in the sky, is about nine light years distant. However, it is hundreds of thousands of times smaller than Antares: Antares is likely one of the largest stars in our galaxy, but it is over six hundred light years away, and is a cooler red star compared to the white-hot blue Sirius, so to us it’s only the fifteenth brightest in the night sky.

Even the Bible got that one right, though: “The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another. And star differs from star in splendor (1 Corinthians 15:41).”

By the way, I was successful at spotting Comet Lovejoy last Sunday. It has been cloudy ever since, so another opportunity has not afforded itself. But that night I needed binoculars to do it, and Lovejoy was just a fuzzy ball, not the tailed comet I had hoped to see. Still, it was fun to find, blazing through what would be our constellation Taurus. On the night I observed it, it was about fifty million miles away -- about half as far away as the sun is from us -- and actually heading toward its solar encounter later this month. From there, it is always interesting to see what impact perihelion will have on a comet. (Perihelion is an object’s closest meeting with the sun.) Once the skies clear (tonight?), I’ll try to keep my binocs pointed its direction in the days ahead, all the while praising my Creator:

“Oh, Lord, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth! (Psalm 8:1, 9)”

And beyond. 

~~RGM, January 15, 2015

P.S. If you’re interested in spotting the comet, here’s a URL sky map that’ll give you the way to find it in the next couple weeks. It’s barreling past and to the right of the Pleiades this weekend.