The
purpose of this feature is to give scout leaders, educators and naturalists an
idea of some of the natural events coming up each month. We will try to
cover a variety of natural events ranging from sky events to calling periods of
amphibians, bird and mammal watching tips, prominent wildflowers and
anything else that comes to mind. We will also note prominent
constellations appearing over the eastern horizon at mid-evening each month for
our area for those who would like to learn the constellations. If you have
suggestions for other types of natural information you would like to see added
to this calendar, let us know!
Though we link book references to nationwide sources, we encourage you to
support your local book store whenever possible.
Notes From December 2022
On December 28th, after the last clouds from winter storm Elliott finally
cleared, we decided to take a brief trip to the Peabody Wildlife
Management Area near Drakesboro, Kentucky. Rather than taking Interstate 65, we
took the scenic route up state highway 431 through Springfield, Tennessee
and continued north through Russellville, Kentucky. The roads were mostly
clear and the rural countryside still had a layer of snow.
The Peabody Wildlife Management Area is a strip mine reclamation area
created to repair the massive damage to the landscape done by the Peabody
Coal Company. The strip-mined coal was used by TVA's Paradise Steam Plant,
named after the small town of Paradise, Kentucky. The town's demise is a well-known story due to John Prine's elegiac song,
"Paradise". As a child Prine visited his grandparents
there. When told of
the town's fate, he wrote the song for his father. At present, the only
remnant of the town is a small graveyard atop a hill overlooking the steam
plant. TVA bought up the land around the plant in 1967 and all
remaining houses and buildings of the town were removed.
John Prine's presence lingers over the landscape. Prine passed
away on April 7th, 2020 due to Covid-19. As per his wishes in "Paradise",
half of his ashes were spread down the Green River.
The steam plant operated between 1963 and 2019. A gas-fired plant was
completed in 2017 and continues to operate today. Peabody Coal Company went
bankrupt in 2016. Prine commented on Facebook at the time, saying, " I
take no delight in anyone's misfortune. I just hope the workers and their
families will be taken care of...Fairness and a generous heart, John
Prine."
Female Merlin
in late afternoon, Peabody Wildlife Management Area near
Drakesboro, Kentucky December 28th, Sony camera and 600mm f/4 lens
with 1.4x teleconverter. 1/1600 sec at f5.6
Efforts to restore the landscape began in the 1980's. The Kentucky
Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources worked with other agencies to
acquire 35,000 acres of land. In time the total acreage increased to
around 60,000 acres. The resilience of nature is amazing. The area is
recovering. Stands of maturing secondary growth oak-hickory forest are
interspersed with grasslands newly seeded with native warm-season grasses.
Wet bottomlands and lakes exist throughout. The birding was quite good in
the limited time we had to explore it. One nice surprise was the abundance
of White-crowned Sparrows there, many of them calling. We had a female
Merlin that gave us a nice fly-by late in the afternoon. Just after sunset
we spotted three Tundra Swans on one of the small lakes, a pleasant end to
a memorable afternoon.
Sky Events for January 2023
The Quadrantid Meteor Shower peaks in the morning hours of January 4th.
The meteors appear to radiate from the northern part of the constellation Bootes.
Comet
ZTF E3 will be in the dawn sky during January and may reach naked eye
visibility. See the Sky and Telescope
Observing page for more details.
Morning Sky:
See above for details on the
Quandrantid Meteor Shower on the morning of January 4th and Comet
ZTF (Comet 2022 E3) during January. Mercury will reach greatest
elongation from the Sun on January 30th, and may be visible from
the middle of the month onward low in the east before sunrise. It
rises about an hour and a half before the Sun. A low eastern
horizon will be helpful, as will a pair of binoculars.
Evening Sky:
Mars, June 11th, 2016. 20" Newtonian Reflector and ZWO ASI
120MMS camera.
Bright Venus is emerging from behind the Sun and appears low in
the southwest after sunset.
Look for it about 8 degrees above the southwest horizon 30 minutes
after sunset. About an hour later, look for much fainter Saturn
about 19 degrees above the southwest horizon in Capricornus.
Jupiter is in Pisces below the "Square of Pegasus", high in the
south-southwest. Mars is in Taurus and is beginning to fade as
Earth pulls away from it. On January 22nd, Venus and Saturn will
appear only about 1/3rd of a degree apart, making them visible in
the same field of view in a telescope. Finally, on the night of
January 30th/31st, Mars will appear quite close to the Moon, close
enough to see the limb of the Moon and the planet in the field of
view of a high power eyepiece. The closest approach should be
around 12:30am EST or 11:30pm CST, but since the exact time varies
with geographic location, you should begin observing a little
earlier in the evening to be sure you catch it.
Constellations:
NGC 1300 in Eridanus, November 18th, 19th and 20th, 2014. 12.5
inch Newtonian Reflector, Total exposure 5 hours.
The views below
show the sky looking east at 10:30pm EST on January 7th. The first view
shows the sky with the constellations outlined and names depicted. Star
and planet names are in green. Constellation names are in blue. The
second view shows the same scene without labels.
Ursa Major, the Great Bear, has now cleared the horizon in the
northeast. In the nose of the bear the bright galaxies Messier 81
and Messier 82 are visible as small faint glows in binoculars. The
bright stars of Leo the Lion are visible now. Hydra, the Water
Serpent, rears its head menacingly. Hydra's brightest star Alphard
is known as "The Solitary One" because of its somewhat isolated
location from other bright stars. Canes Venatici, the Hunting
Dogs, make their appearance just above the northeast horizon. Among
the fainter constellations in the east are Leo Minor, the small
Lion, Cancer, the Crab, and Sextans, the Sextant.
Visible above the southern horizon, to the right of Orion, is the
constellation of Eridanus, the River. Faint galaxies are scattered throughout
the constellation, among them NGC 1300, a beautiful example of a
barred spiral galaxy. Above is an image I took several years ago.
Hydrogen Alpha areas dot the spiral arms with a pinkish glow.
January 15th, 10:00pm EST, Looking East
January 15th, 10:00pm EST, Looking East
On Learning the
Constellations:
We advise learning a few constellations each month, and then following
them through the seasons. Once you associate a particular constellation
coming over the eastern horizon at a certain time of year, you may start
thinking about it like an old friend, looking forward to its arrival each
season. The stars in the evening scene above, for instance, will always
be in the same place relative to the horizon at the same time and date
each January. In particular, learn the brightest stars (like Regulus and
Procyon in the above scene), for they will guide you to the fainter
stars. Once you can locate the more prominent constellations, you can
"branch out" to other constellations around them. It may take you a
little while to get a sense of scale, to translate what you see on the
computer screen or what you see on the page of a book to what you see in
the sky. Look for patterns, like the stars of Leo.
The earth's
rotation causes the constellations to appear to move across the sky just
as the sun and the moon appear to do. If you go outside earlier than the
time shown on the charts, the constellations will be lower to the eastern
horizon. If you observe later, they will have climbed higher.
As each season
progresses, the earth's motion around the sun causes the constellations to
appear a little farther towards the west each night for any given time of
night. If you want to see where the constellations in the above figures
will be on February 7th at 10:30pm EST, you can stay up till 12:30am EST
on the January 8th and get a preview. The westward motion of the
constellations is equivalent to two hours per month.
A good book to learn the constellations is
Patterns in the Sky, by Hewitt-White.
For sky watching tips, an inexpensive good guide is
Secrets of Stargazing, by Becky Ramotowski.
A good general reference book on astronomy is the Peterson
Field Guide,
A Field Guide to the Stars and Planets, by Pasachoff. The book retails for around $14.00.
The Virtual
Moon Atlas is a terrific way to learn the
surface features of the Moon. And it's free software. You can
download the Virtual Moon Atlas here.
Apps:
The Sky Safari 6 basic version is free and a great aid for
the beginning stargazer. I really love the
Sky Safari 6 Pro. Both are available for iOS and
Android operating systems. There are three versions. The Pro is
simply the best astronomy app I've ever seen.
The description of the Pro version reads, "includes over 100 million stars, 3 million galaxies
down to 18th magnitude, and 750,000 solar system objects; including every comet
and asteroid ever discovered."
You may also want to try the very beautiful app
Sky Guide.
Though not as data intensive as Sky Safari, Sky Guide goes all out
to show the sheer beauty of the night sky.
Great for locating the planets.
A
nother
great app is the Photographer's
Ephemeris. Great for finding sunrise, moonrise, sunset and
moonset times and the precise place on the horizon that the event will
occur. Invaluable not only for planning photographs, but also nice
to plan an outing to watch the full moon rise. Available for both
androids and iOS operating systems.
Amphibians:
Spring Peeper
A lot of things happen with amphibians in January. To see them,
though, you have to be out in the sort of weather that makes most people
stay indoors. The trick is to go out on mild (50 degrees Fahrenheit or
warmer) rainy nights. For safety, it is important that you have another
person with you to watch for traffic as you slowly drive the back roads,
looking for things that cross the road in front of you. Make frequent
stops to listen for calling frogs. In January, both
Spring Peepers
and Upland Chorus
Frogs are not uncommon, and
Wood Frogs have their
short-lived breeding choruses in woodland ponds.
Southern
Leopard Frogs are also sometimes calling on mild January nights. We
have seen Northern
Cricket Frogs, Green
Frogs, American
Bullfrogs and
American Toads foraging in January. Just about anything is
possible. On January 22, 1999, we found an
Eastern Spadefoot
out in the stormy weather. That same day a tornado ripped through
Clarksville, Tennessee, doing much damage to the Austin Peay campus.
January is an exciting time of year to look for herps!
This is also the time to look for Tiger Salamander and Streamside
Salamander egg masses. Tiger Salamanders like to deposit their egg masses
on the vegetation in shallow water in small ponds and wetlands. Streamside Salamanders deposit their egg masses on the bottoms of rocks in
streams. If you are looking for salamanders, always remember to carefully
replace any stones you pick up exactly where you found them. Recommended: The Frogs and Toads of North America,
Lang Elliott, Houghton Mifflin Co.
Nature Notes Archives: Nature Notes
was a page we published in 2001 and 2002 containing our observations about
everything from the northern lights display of November 2001 to frog and
salamander egg masses.
Night scenes prepared with The
Sky Professional from Software Bisque
