Take a sideways glance, see things differently. Twist and turn, change the colours, change the exposure, change the contrast. Fire in the sky, glowing, shining, silhouetted, the world can be an amazing place.
Sunlight patterns
Tag: Sun
Sunset over Alsager Mere
It doesn’t get more spectacular, looking out over the mere as the sun set, changing from orange and blue to a peach and rosy purple. It was a long day but enjoyable.
It’s interesting that on Mars the sky is red with dust in the daytime, then the sun sets and the sky turns blue.
I live on the wrong side of the hill so that I don’t get to see sunsets very often. It was lovely to see this.
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Red morning sky
I woke up to this red sky about half an hour ago. The sky is now more yellow and the sun is above the horizon. The light is streaming through the leaves and lighting them up. The red sky does not bode well for later on… Red sky in the morning shepherd’s warning (or sailors), but it certainly makes a breathtaking sight right in the heart of the city.
Green skies
The Aurora borealis is something I’ve never seen but always wanted to. When I see photos of it I’m amazed that electrons from the suns solar wind can cause such beauty.
The electrons and other particles travel along the magnetic lines of force at the North Pole (and South – the Aurora Australis I think it’s called). As they interact with the magnetic field they glow. The different colours denote different elements. I think Green is Nitrogen and Pink is Oxygen.
The Aurora occur at the poles because they are where the magnetic field is at its weakest and drops down towards the pole. If you have seen iron filings round a bar magnet you can see how the field curves round and down.
So what is solar wind? It is the matter that pours out from the sun when there is a hole in the corona (upper atmosphere of the sun). There are coronal mass ejections where the sun spews out masses of ionised electrons which interact with Earth’s atmosphere.
There is a lot more about aurora’s but my knowledge is not good enough to explain more.
Waiting for Spring.
It’s Autumn and I’m already waiting for Spring! I need to work on the garden, cut shrubs back, plant tulip bulbs, plant snowdrops, then… Wait, wait, wait… Through the cold and rain, through the shirt dates and long nights.
I want to see the baby birds, the squirrel and its kits, the tadpoles in the pond (if we have frogs we must have tadpoles). I look forward to warmer, not too hot, days. Life returns.
In the winter here it usually does not get too cold. But it can be grey, wet and windy.
The clocks go back at the end of October, then the sun will go down an hour earlier, I hate sitting in the dark in the winter, trying to keep warm. Looking forward to the winter solstice when the sun starts coming back a little more every day.
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Sun through cloud
The sun was shining through the clouds at Spode this afternoon giving everything a moody look.
Grey clouds, leaden
A glimmer of sun
Bright, yellow, hot
Sizzles through the clouds.
Humid heat festers
Industrial view languishes
Only a few plants
And a cat sleeping in the dust,
But alive,
Better than ruins.
Morcambe Bay view
Today’s view,
long drive.
More later!
To paint or draw the view.
Sometimes seaside towns are all pastel colours, peaches and primrose yellows or burnt orange and duck egg blues. But sometimes only the frontages are painted, I guess because people don’t have the money to paint the backs, or the weather is generally too bad and it wipes the colour away, washes the walls and the sun bleaches the buildings.
I think I might paint the view but add bright colours? Or I could stick with a muted palette. I have a sketchbook and I’m armed with a marker pen. Will see how I feel in the morning.
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Moon and Jupiter
Well you could barely see them really, but a few months ago , in winter, one dawn I saw the crescent moon and the planet Jupiter. The planet was up on a diagonal from the curve of the moon. Like a parachute blowing out of control in a strong wind, canopy downward and the planet swinging up and away into the morning sky. The branches made it hard to see, hard to locate, and as the wind was blowing the view was obstructed by the swaying trees. Most of the time the planet would be visible and the moon not and then vice versa.
So why am I telling you this? Because I spotted the photo and I wanted to practice describing it. I’ve mostly spoken about the Moon and Jupiter, not about the surroundings. The horizon. Is hidden by the line of shop roofs and tree branches. The sky has lightened but the sun is not up. The position of the sun (down and to the left) is indicated by the illumination on the moon (trust me it was a crescent curved downwards to the left). So that’s it. Not a story, a description.
Summer flowers
I’m craving bright plants and flowers,
Summer sun and bright blue skies,
Hanging baskets
Piled up with blousy flowers
Swiss chard and marigolds
Poppies and antirrhinums
Names that scramble on the tongue
But bloom on the ground.
Days to sit on the patio getting hot,
Or in the summerhouse keeping cool
……. Instead? Rain and wind!
Mallaband-Brown 