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 June 2021
Sunrise at the Pond, June 30th. The house is hidden by the trees
on the right.
On June 30th I walked out to the pond just after sunrise.
Butterflies and dragonflies are warming up then and you can sometimes find
them still on their roost, covered with dew. I hadn't been there long when
a saw a dragonfly, a Banded Pennant, making a slow flight along the edge
of the pond. When I approached its landing spot, it let me get close
enough to make an image with my iPhone. The colors in the wings below are
due to
thin-film interference. The wing membranes average less than 3
microns in thickness! Despite this, their wings are strong enough to allow the extreme
maneuvers of which dragonflies are capable.
Banded Pennant female, Celithemis fasciata, June 30th.Pond, June
30th (iPhone)
Just on impulse I slowly extended my hand down to the stem of grass it
was on and touched its feet. Amazingly, it climbed onto my hand! I lifted
it up and looked at it closely. It didn't seem to be injured in any way. I
found another plant stem to place it on and it climbed off my hand.
Meanwhile I spotted a Common Sanddragon nearby. I decided to see if a
dragonfly of another species would act the same way. Maybe the cool
morning temperature was slowing them down.
Common Sanddraggon, Progomphus obscures, June 30th (iPhone).
The Sanddragon did the same thing! With no hesitation, it
climbed onto my hand. Maybe the warmth of my hand attracted them. I made
the iPhone image above, then returned it to its roost. The behavior
of the two dragonflies was interesting, in that dragonflies are voracious predators and incredibly
good fliers. They are said to miss only one prey in twenty. To see them
this docile was a surprise. When they are warmed up they have a reaction
time of around 30 to50 milliseconds. That's five times faster than the average
human! Check out this BBC video
of a dragonfly made with a high-speed camera. Their color vision is
believed to be outstanding, extending to parts of the spectrum that humans
are unable to see.
Sky Events for
July 2021:
Earth is at aphelion
on July 5th, its farthest distance from the Sun this year.
Morning Sky:
Mercury
reaches greatest elongation from the Sun on July 4th and achieves its
greatest elevation above the horizon on July 9th and 10th. On July 8th,
look for a very slender waning crescent Moon to the left of Mercury. It
should be a pretty sight. The pair should give a nice view in binoculars.
Evening Sky:
Saturn,
Tethys and Dione, June 11th, 2016, 20 Inch Newtonian Reflector and
ZWO Camera
On July 11th Mars and Venus will be only 0.6 degrees apart in the
western sky after sunset, and a waxing crescent Moon will be roughly
5 degrees to the right of the pair.
Saturn is in Capricornus and
rises about an hour after sunset at midmonth. Jupiter rises about
an hour after Saturn in Aquarius. Both planets are favorably
placed in the early morning sky around 3:00am EDT.
Jupiter's dusky belts change from night to night.
Since the planet takes less than ten hours to rotate, you can
watch details move across the disk during an evening. It's always fun to watch the dance of the four Galilean
moons!
If you've never seen Saturn, it's simply spectacular in just about any
size telescope.
In fact, even a good quality 60mm refractor will give a
better view of the ringed planet than Galileo was ever able to see. Saturn
was a puzzle to him. In his low-resolution telescope the planet appeared as three separate
discs - one large disc with a smaller disc on each side of it. A few
years later, he returned to look at the planet when the rings presented
edge-on. His two attendant discs had disappeared! He never solved the
riddle. He would have loved to
see the view available to just about any amateur astronomer today.
Constellations:
The Summer Milky Way
over my pond, July 2nd, 2019. Nikon D750 camera and Rokinon
14mm lens. Single 30 second exposure. Jupiter is to the right
of the Milky Way, Saturn to the left.
The views below show the
sky looking east at 10:30pm EDT 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.
Saturn rises in
Capricornus,
The Seagoat, one of the stranger inhabitants of the night sky. According
to legend it is half fish and half goat. I don't think it's a popular tale to tell around a campfire.
If you look to the
right of Saturn to the south southeast, you will find the little "teapot"
asterism that is formed by some of the bright stars of
Sagittarius,
the Archer. The great star clouds of the Milky Way extend upwards from the
spout of the teapot. Just to the right of the spout is the location
Sagittarius A* the point that marks the center of our Milky Way Galaxy.
The star clouds wind through the constellations of Scutum, Aquilla,
Sagitta, Vulpecula and Cygnus, then on through Lacerta and Cassiopeia.
Some of the features of the Milky Way, like the Lagoon Nebula, you can see
with the naked eye on a clear dark night.
Others, like M27, the Dumbbell Nebula
in Vulpecula, require binoculars to spot.
It 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 here.
July 15th, 10:30pm EST, Looking East
July 15th, 10:30pm EST, Looking East
On Learning the
Constellations:
Try 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 July. Of course, the planets do move slowly
through the constellations, but with practice you will learn to identify them
from their appearance. In particular, learn the brightest stars (like
Deneb and Altair 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 that make up the constellation Cygnus.
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
August 15th at 10:30pm EDT, you can stay up till 12:30am EDT on July 16th 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. We 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 we'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."
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:
Young Eastern Spadefoot on Sweetgum Ball
July’s frogs and toads are much like June’s. Listen for
Cope's Gray Treefrogs,
Gray Treefrogs,
Bird-Voiced Treefrogs,
Green Treefrogs and
Barking Treefrogs.
Eastern Cricket Frogs and
Southern Cricket Frogs call a lot during July, and the calls of
Bullfrogs and
Green Frogs fill the night air. After summer thunderstorms listen for
the high, insect-like call of the
Eastern Narrowmouth Toad and the strange-sounding
Eastern Spadefoot. Be sure to look closely at young toads you encounter.Sometimes we find young Eastern Spadefoots foraging during
the day.A young Eastern Spadefoot
will have vertical
pupils, a tiny spade on its rear feet and will often have some red warts, even
when only a fraction of an inch long. A hand lens helps to see these
features (or turn your binoculars around and use them for a magnifying glass.)
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
