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!

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Notes and Images From June and July 2018

We had this pretty double rainbow on July 1st.  Summer is a great time to see rainbows, and you'll see more if you get in the habit of looking in the opposite direction of the Sun after a thunderstorm has passed.  If you look closely above, you'll see that the fainter secondary bow (above the brighter primary bow) has the order of the colors reversed.  This and other odds and ends about rainbows are discussed in a Nature Notes column I did way back in 2002.  You can find it here.

If you look closely at the top image you can see a bird sitting on the bare branches of a tree at the left hand side of the image.  The bottom image is a closeup of that bird taken with a long lens.  It's a Northern Mockingbird, still somewhat wet from the storm.  The colors of the rainbow shade the sky beyond.

I use a monochrome video camera for planetary photography.  It's a fairly complicated process.  You must take a short several-minute video through the telescope through a red filter, then again through a green filter and finally again through a blue filter.  Computer software sifts through thousands of images from the videos and averages only the sharpest images from the videos to get one final image from each of the three videos. You must then combine the three filtered images to get a color image of the planet.

On this particular night, my telescope drive had a bug that made tracking the planet difficult.  I ended up getting only the red-filtered image shown at right.  Still, it was fun getting the telescope back under a starry sky and imaging again.

The first thing that I noticed was its rather slow, ambling gait.  It headed directly away, so I couldn't tell much.  I tried to close the gap as much as I could before it turned around.  An escaped exotic animal?  I couldn't make any sense of it.  All I had with me was my iPhone. Not exactly a telephoto lens, but I clicked away as I walked. 

Finally it stopped and turned sideways.  A bear!  That wasn't even on my radar! It was a yearling, rather skinny looking and with seemingly oversized ears.  I got off a couple of shots before it saw me.  It immediately bolted for the woods to the right in the image above.  I looked as I walked by the woods that into which it disappeared, but could not spot anything in the rather thick undergrowth.  What a day! 

I checked the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency's website and found that occasional sightings of bears are not that unusual in areas some distance from the Smokies.  According to that site, out-of-place bear sightings peak around June and July, as males roam during the breeding season and younger bears try to establish their territories.  There is a lot of information on black bears at the TWRA website, including range maps, what to do if you have a bear encounter and places to send information about bear sightings you may have.

The following information is from the TWRA website cited above:

"Adult bears can be three feet tall at the shoulder and six feet in length. Black bears vary greatly in weight, depending on food availability and time of year. Weights range between 125 to 600 pounds for adults. Females are generally smaller. The back end of a black bear is normally taller than the front and black bears do not have a hump at the shoulder, like their cousin the grizzly bear.

Black bears have average eyesight, fantastic hearing and an amazing sense of smell. Thought to be one of the best noses in the animal kingdom, their smell is 100 times greater than our own and seven times greater than a bloodhound.

Although cumbersome looking, bears are great swimmers and capable of running at burst of 30 miles an hour. Black bear are very dexterous and strong. They have been seen unscrewing lids of jars and easily tearing open metal containers to reach food.

Black bears are considered crepuscular animals. That is, they are most active at dawn and dusk; although they can be active any time in areas where humans are less common. Bears bed down on the hottest of days, in cooler safe locations. Healthy, normal bears avoid humans and areas around human dwellings."

Bear populations reached a low point during the latter part of the 20th century, and have been slowly recovering since the 1970's.  As they expand outward from the Smokies into their historical range, don't be too surprised if you happen upon one.

Venus continues to dazzle in the western sky after sunset this month. It becomes visible before any other star or planet.

Mercury continues to be visible in the darkening sky at dusk this month. Look for it at the beginning of the month low in the western sky about 30 to 40 minutes after sunset at the end of the month, below and to the right of bright Venus.

Saturn is in Sagittarius this month, rising about 7:25pm CDT at the beginning of the month.  The tilt of the rings has now opened to 26 degrees, and the view is spectacular in any size telescope.  The planet transits around 12:20am CDT.  The globe of Saturn is now 18.4 seconds of an arc.

Constellations:  The views below show the sky looking east at 10:00pm CDT on July 15th.  The first chart shows the sky with the constellation 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.  Prominent constellations this month in the eastern sky are Cygnus, the Swan, with its bright star Deneb, and Aquila, the Eagle, with its bright star Altair.  Below and to the left of Altair is the constellation of Delphinus, the Dolphin, looking like it's leaping over the eastern horizon.  Above Delphinus look for the arrow-like form of Sagitta, the Arrow.  Between Sagitta and Cygnus lie the faint stars of Vulpecula the Fox.  One of the brightest planetary nebula in the sky resides in this little constellation.  Messier 27, can be seen as a fuzzy patch in binoculars (don't expect the bright colors - just a grayish green spot).  Use the easy-to-find stars of nearby Sagitta to locate it, using the finder chart on the Messier 27 web page.

Recommended:  The Frogs and Toads of North America, Lang Elliott, Houghton Mifflin Co.