Save the Drammatus for your Mammatus

   Last evening a line of intense thunderstorms accompanied by high winds (and even a tornado in Huron County) rolled across Michigan toppling trees and  knocking out power to tens of thousands.  I was awoken from my pre-work nap by my alarm clock as I had slept through the whole storm. 

   Per our evening ritual, I took the dog out to empty his accumulated liquids and solids before he turned in for the night.  When we headed back toward the house, I looked up and saw that mammatus clouds had formed in the wake of the storms. 

   Mammatus aka mammatocumulus (or mammary clouds) are named for their sac-like structures that are said to resemble a cow's utter or human equivalent. Most clouds form when warm humid air rises and condenses in cooler air.  These clouds on the other hand, develop when cool moist air containing  large drops or even ice crystals descends into drier air. The mammatus phenomena can be a long lasting feature, as it may take a while for the large drops to evaporate. 

  The common misconception that I had heard growing up, was that they are associated with tornadic activity.  But only times I have seen them were after a severe storm had passed and the dry zone into which they formed had sucked the energy out of the atmosphere.      

Taken from my driveway

   Sensing a rare photo opportunity I grabbed my camera and headed toward the lake shore in the waning dusk.

editor's note: we've been trying to keep this blog focused on birds, so nerdy sky stuff pertaining to weather and astronomy has been posted to another site Mostly Nerd (but not always) , It's not getting much activity so either people haven't found it or they aren't interested.  If under the radar music is your thing there is another site in the Mostly              (but not Always) franchise called Mostly Heard (but not Always)

Red in the morning, blah blah blah

   Tuesday morning, just before sunrise, the eastern sky morphed from gray to an artist's palette of pinks, blues and every shade in between.  Of course the colorful dawn glow was a harbinger of rainy weather, that moved in over the next couple of hours.   The incoming clouds snuffed out every trace of color before the sun even made it to the horizon just minutes later.

View from space?

   Tuesday night, an errand that I attempted to run to Grosse Ile on my way to work was thwarted by two trains and boat-triggered bridge opening. I aborted the mission before I got to the island and found myself with some time on my hands, as I had left home early and was only slightly detoured.  

  As I got closer to work I noticed that the moonlight in the clear sky overhead was illuminating some clouds over Lake Erie and northern Ohio that had their own internal light source.  So with my few extra minutes I was able to fire off a few photos before my shift started.

   Not sure if any of my photos are worth a thousand words but the photograph below may be worth a dozen or so for each of the potential cropping options.

First crop....eliminated ground clutter

Tight crop reveals stars of Sagittarius

Teapot asterism

Works as a vertical also

    This next photo reveals lightning tentacles reaching for the stars.
                                      
   They become more apparent in tighter crop

Venus gets photobombed

     This morning I stayed over an hour into dayshift.  During the hour working with my buddy Sean, who recently bought a telescope, the conversation turned to planets currently visible.  I mentioned to him that Venus is now a large crescent as it is heading to a January 11th  alignment with the Sun.
    This afternoon I awoke to a beautiful late-December clear sky with a temperature in the mid-40's, a perfect opportunity to try to find Venus during the day.  I found it almost immediately with binoculars but with the smaller field of view of my telescope the low-contrast sky made for a frustrating hour-long search before I finally found it. Once it was located I removed the telescope eyepiece and hooked up my camera, refocused and fired off 4 photos.  When I reviewed the photos, I was shocked to see that Delta Airlines photobombed my Venus portrait by flying a DC-9 through my field of view. 

  Four photos and I was done. I wasn't going to top that.  The funny thing is, is that I never saw the plane even after I noticed I had captured a photo of it.   Although the jet looks like it is low, consider that this was taken through a scope of 2000mm focal length, so the planes angular size is only 9 minutes of arc, less than 1/3 of the 30 minutes of arc that the moon appears. 
  Here is the calculation of the distance to the jet.  9 arc minutes =0.15 degrees.  Sine of 0.15 degrees = 0.00261799.  The length of a DC-9 fuselage is 104.4 ft.  The length of the fuselage divided by the distance to the plane=sine of 0.15.
   So 104.4 ft divided by 0.00261799 (the sine of the angle) = 39877 ft
  Among certain circles there are rumors that I heavily photoshop my photos.  Here is the original photo. You can judge the degree of photoshopping.

Breaking News Spaceweather.com put my photo on their front page here is the link.
http://www.spaceweather.com/

Here is a screengrab of their home page from December 28, 2013.  So if you click on the link above after my photo has been replaced you can check their archives by entering the date above in the archive search in their right hand column.

Photos of the week, Birds, Moon, Jupiter and Waterspout

Here are a few photos I took from my yard this week.



Red-eyed Vireo

Thick Crescent

Jupiter with four moons

Moon ID photo

Ruby-throated Hummingbird still hanging around

Nashville Warbler

Red-eyed Vireo

Same bird

  The photo below was taken last Saturday from the Point Mouillee Headquarters.  It is a funnel cloud attempting to become a waterspout.

Waterspout Funnel Cloud

CBC Recon pt. 2 (with meteors)

 

    Went to work a little early last night and spent the extra few minutes trying to photograph the Geminid meteor shower.  I was able to capture a couple of them with my camera's sensitivity set to ISO 8000.

 

 

 

see answer below

Faint meteor passing between Jupiter and the Pleiades star cluster

 

The zoomed in inset shows Jupiter with its moon Ganymede

    Now the birds.....

Adult Black-crowned Night Heron

 

Immature Black-crowned Night Heron

 

 

Male Wood Ducks

Pair of Hooded Mergansers

Belted Kingfisher

Tree Sparrow

Brown Creeper

Golden-crowned Kinglet

Yard Crossbills

  This afternoon I spent a little time watching my bird feeders when I heard a flock of White-winged Crossbills fly over my yard.  With my camera at the ready, I was able to get some distant shots of them.  This is only the second time I've seen them from my yard.   They are the 91st species I've seen from the yard this year, breaking last years record of 90.

9 White-winged Crossbills

Composite photo of cropped images

Vultures and Eagles



Adult Bald Eagle

    Turkey Vulture (TV) Migration over Southeast Michigan reaches its peak around the middle of October every year.   Yesterday October 12, 2012   favorable conditions resulted in a total of 10,000  TVs counted at the Lake Erie Metropark (LEMP) hawk count.   As many of the birds passed to the south of the count area my friend Pat Mulawa and I headed south to the Point Mouillee State Game Area HQ to get a better view. 

Kettle Of Turkey Vultures



    Several groups flew almost straight over head providing me with some nice photo ops as Pat scanned the skies picking out other hawks and eagles.

Immature Turkey Vulture  (note dark head)

Immature Bald Eagle showing lots of white on its belly

   Pat marveled at the symmetry of the wing pattern  of the Bald Eagle pictured below.  Later when I zoomed in on the display screen on my camera, I noticed that pattern resembled eyes with the symmetry broken by the eye on the birds right wing (our left) being open and the left wing eye closed in a winking manner.  Eyespot mimicry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyespot_(mimicry) is an evolutionary defense mechanism where animals with spots that look like big eyes are less likely to be preyed upon.  Animals that benefit from this,  range from Tiger Swallowtail larva to Buckeye Butterfly adults to Four-eye Butterfly Fish to the Servals of Africa.  The pattern on this Eagle's wing has nothing to do with that because it already looks menacing enough and it resides at the top of its food chain.  More likely it has to do with the human brain trying to make sense of patterns.  That's how perceived images of Elvis, Jesus and the Virgin Mary are interpreted as messages from beyond in everything from toast, pizza pans, stains on overpasses, tree bark and  lastly and definitely leastly (I'm not making this up) no disrespect intended...... dog butts.

  http://bitsandpieces1.blogspot.com/2006/09/jesus-image-found-in-dogs-butt.html   

Another immature Bald Eagle with winking owl pattern

Uncropped photo of previous bird shows its great altitude more accurately

   The distant birds in the above and below photographs look pretty similar but while I was taking photos of the second bird Pat was watching it with his spotting scope and was able to see the telltale wing patches that are characteristics of an Immature Golden Eagle.  

Vastly different bird at similar altitude

     

Cropped version showing white wing patches of immature Golden Eagle

    The Golden Eagles migrating through Southeast Michigan are most likely coming from their breeding grounds in Northeast Ontario and Northern Quebec at least 600 miles away. It's always pretty cool to see them pass over. This one here is one of the early ones as the peak of the migration at LEMP is between October 20- November 10.   Show up at the LEMP Hawkwatch site during that timeframe on a day with light winds with a northerly component to them and you most likely will get to see a Golden.  If you're lucky you'll get a view like the one I got last year on October 28 when the bird below flew almost straight overhead at a relatively low altitude.   I'd been trying for years to get that shot. 

Golden Eagle at Lake Erie Metropark 10/28/11

Same bird only closer